Island Fire

201762,884 acresCalifornia

The Island Fire burned 62,884 acres, about 98 square miles, across Siskiyou County. It began on June 26, 2017.

Watch how it happened

Island Fire · 2017

How it happened

Watch it burn in the order satellites saw it, coloured by how severely each place burned.

About this replay

Date (UTC)—Historical replay

Burned so far—acres

High severity—of the area so far

Detections7,743satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

Burn severityHigh, Moderate, Low, Unburned to low, Increased greenness

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Washington, D.C., to scale61 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (6,345 VIIRS and 1,398 MODIS) inside the final perimeter; each place takes the time of its nearest detection, so the order is satellite-observed but interpolated between passes, roughly every 12 hours. Severity: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS, U.S. Forest Service), mapped from Landsat after the fire.

How severely it burned

Burn severity inside the final perimeter, classified from Landsat images taken before and after the fire.

Map of burn severity across the Island Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	10%	6,479
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	28%	17,723
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	47%	29,380
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	14%	8,588
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	1.1%	711

10% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 6,479 acres; 38% burned at moderate or high severity.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (U.S. Geological Survey and USDA Forest Service). Classes come from the change in a Landsat burn index (dNBR) between images before and after the fire; acres are each class’s share of the fire’s mapped area.

Where it burned

Acres inside each county, measured from the satellite-mapped perimeter.

Acres burned by county

Siskiyou County	CA	62,932

Other large fires in California in 2017

Thomas Fire282,076 acres
Oak Fire95,627 acres
Detwiler Fire83,375 acres
Long Valley Fire80,503 acres
Nuns Fire56,839 acres
Atlas Fire51,629 acres
Steele Fire49,157 acres
Garza Fire48,477 acres

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS and U.S. Forest Service). Type recorded: Wildfire.