French Fire

202127,323 acresCalifornia

The French Fire burned 27,323 acres, about 43 square miles, across Kern County. It began on August 18, 2021.

Watch how it happened

French 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

Detections2,979satellite 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 (2,395 VIIRS and 584 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 French Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	27%	7,476
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	31%	8,516
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	31%	8,575
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	10%	2,740

27% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 7,476 acres; 59% 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

Kern County	CA	27,330

Other large fires in California in 2021

Dixie Fire979,722 acres
Caldor Fire226,739 acres
Monument Fire225,973 acres
Haypress Fire204,379 acres
Antelope Fire141,890 acres
Mcfarland Fire121,476 acres
Sugar Fire108,479 acres
Windy Fire97,802 acres

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