Mccash Fire

202195,698 acresCalifornia

The Mccash Fire burned 95,698 acres, about 150 square miles, across Siskiyou County. It began on August 1, 2021.

Watch how it happened

Mccash 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

Detections13,868satellite 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 (11,291 VIIRS and 2,577 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 Mccash Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	18%	17,479
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	31%	29,919
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	37%	35,010
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	14%	13,079
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.1%	62
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.2%	149

18% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 17,479 acres; 50% 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	95,776

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.