Powerline Fire

201754,349 acresIdaho

The Powerline Fire burned 54,349 acres, about 85 square miles, across Power County. It began on August 4, 2017.

Watch how it happened

Powerline 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

Detections1,010satellite 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 (875 VIIRS and 135 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 Powerline Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	11%	6,090
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	80%	43,327
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	8.2%	4,459
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.8%	456

No part of the fire was classed as high severity; 11% burned at moderate 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

Power County	ID	54,378

Other large fires in Idaho in 2017

Highline Fire93,679 acres
Lolo Peak Fire62,337 acres
Mammoth Cave Fire50,410 acres
Powerline Fire45,405 acres
Loveridge Fire39,611 acres
Shoestring Fire35,544 acres
Antelope Fire29,651 acres
Bearskin Fire29,625 acres

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