Blue River Fire

202029,289 acresArizona

The Blue River Fire burned 29,289 acres, about 46 square miles, across Gila County. It began on June 6, 2020.

Watch how it happened

Blue River Fire · 2020

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

Detections538satellite 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 (429 VIIRS and 109 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 Blue River Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	0.4%	103
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	32%	9,283
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	61%	17,893
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	6.9%	2,007

under 1% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 103 acres; 32% 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

Gila County	AZ	29,314

Other large fires in Arizona in 2020

Bush Fire212,384 acres
Bighorn Fire126,035 acres
Mangum Fire71,583 acres
Griffin Fire61,410 acres
Basin Fire38,630 acres
Cow Canyon Fire33,535 acres
Valley Fire29,305 acres
Blue River 2 Fire26,875 acres

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