Kochilagok Hill Fire

202029,714 acresAlaska

The Kochilagok Hill Fire burned 29,714 acres, about 46 square miles, across Kusilvak Census Area. It began on June 2, 2020.

Watch how it happened

Kochilagok Hill 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

Detections717satellite 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 (584 VIIRS and 133 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 Kochilagok Hill Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	62%	18,312
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	15%	4,319
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	24%	7,082

Most of the area inside the perimeter burned at low severity or not at all.

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

Kusilvak Census Area	AK	29,734

Other large fires in Alaska in 2020

Ingakslugwat Hills Fire69,424 acres

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