Slater Fire

2020157,657 acresCalifornia and Oregon

The Slater Fire burned 157,657 acres, about 246 square miles, across 3 counties. It began on September 8, 2020.

Watch how it happened

Slater 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

Detections9,034satellite 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 (7,842 VIIRS and 1,192 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 Slater Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	53%	83,039
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	17%	26,265
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	22%	34,727
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	8.4%	13,283
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.2%	313

53% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 83,039 acres; 69% 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

Siskiyou County	CA	80,557
Josephine County	OR	46,087
Del Norte County	CA	31,136

Other large fires in California and Oregon in 2020

August Complex1.07 million acres
Scu Lightning Complex405,644 acres
Creek Fire381,529 acres
North Complex316,524 acres
Hennessey Fire314,015 acres
Lionshead Fire197,622 acres
Beachie Creek Fire194,483 acres
Castle Fire174,347 acres

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