Canal Fire

202074,857 acresUtah

The Canal Fire burned 74,857 acres, about 117 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on June 26, 2020.

Watch how it happened

Canal 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

Detections186satellite 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 (148 VIIRS and 38 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 Canal Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	0.6%	486
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	27%	20,545
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	54%	40,305
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	17%	12,794
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.5%	393
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.4%	335

1% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 486 acres; 28% 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

Juab County	UT	38,974
Millard County	UT	35,914

Other large fires in Utah in 2020

East Fork Fire106,356 acres

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