Four County Fire

2021122,878 acresKansas

The Four County Fire burned 122,878 acres, about 192 square miles, across 4 counties. It began on December 15, 2021.

Watch how it happened

Four County Fire · 2021

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

Detections226satellite 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 (191 VIIRS and 35 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 Four County Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	93%	113,790
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	7.1%	8,692
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.3%	390

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

Russell County	KS	62,960
Ellis County	KS	50,094
Osborne County	KS	9,893
Rooks County	KS	31

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