Czu Aug Lightning Fire

202085,839 acresCalifornia

The Czu Aug Lightning Fire burned 85,839 acres, about 134 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on August 16, 2020.

Watch how it happened

Czu Aug Lightning 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

Detections3,258satellite 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 (2,918 VIIRS and 340 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 Czu Aug Lightning Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	34%	29,176
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	26%	22,612
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	31%	26,267
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	8.8%	7,569
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.2%	155
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.1%	61

34% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 29,176 acres; 60% 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

Santa Cruz County	CA	63,491
San Mateo County	CA	22,401

Other large fires in California in 2020

August Complex1.07 million acres
Scu Lightning Complex405,644 acres
Creek Fire381,529 acres
North Complex316,524 acres
Hennessey Fire314,015 acres
Castle Fire174,347 acres
Slater Fire157,657 acres
Red Salmon Complex147,429 acres

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