Pass Fire

202366,128 acresNew Mexico

The Pass Fire burned 66,128 acres, about 103 square miles, across Catron County. It began on May 19, 2023.

Watch how it happened

Pass Fire · 2023

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

Detections1,892satellite 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 (1,663 VIIRS and 229 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 Pass Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	58%	38,433
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	40%	26,159
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.6%	374
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	1.8%	1,162

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

Catron County	NM	66,074

Other large fires in New Mexico in 2023

Divide Fire26,656 acres

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