Sunrise Fire

201726,893 acresMontana

The Sunrise Fire burned 26,893 acres, about 42 square miles, across Mineral County. It began on July 17, 2017.

Watch how it happened

Sunrise 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

Detections3,522satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Manhattan, to scale23 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (2,833 VIIRS and 689 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 Sunrise Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	14%	3,798
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	41%	10,994
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	42%	11,380
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	2.7%	722

14% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 3,798 acres; 55% 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

Mineral County	MT	26,896

Other large fires in Montana in 2017

Bridge Coulee Fire222,645 acres
Rice Ridge Fire171,675 acres
Sartin Draw Fire91,520 acres
Deer Creek Fire90,111 acres
Meyers Fire68,734 acres
Lolo Peak Fire62,337 acres
South Breaks Fire39,230 acres
Little Hogback Fire34,653 acres

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