Awatchfire

San Luis Obispo County, California

Belmont Fire

Burning 21.1 miles west of McKittrick and 22.8 miles west of Derby Acres, since Wednesday 9 September.

Map of California. The Belmont Fire burns 239 miles from Sacramento, and 239 miles from the state capital, Sacramento.
The fire sits 239 miles from Sacramento.

137

acres burned so far

35

days burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Belmont Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 858 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 858 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Belmont Fire. Amber flames mark every place that gave off heat in the last day; the shading is the shape of the ground.
Heat in the last day Higher ground pale, valleys dark

858hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 2:40pm on Wednesday, local time.

0readings

of heat in the last day. There is not yet an earlier stretch of record to compare that against.

20.9miles

is how close the heat has come to McKittrick at any point in the record. In the last day the nearest heat has been None miles from it, and the closest this fire has come to Derby Acres is 22.6 miles, None in the last day.

0.7miles

is the furthest any heat has been seen from the point on the official record — the width of the ground involved so far.

Smoke has been recorded lying over this ground three times so far. The thickest of it was thin between 1:00pm and 4:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 17 hours ago, so what is overhead now is not known.

Where the heat is

No cluster large enough to call a separate front. The heat is in one piece.

Conditions measured 10.3 miles from the fire: 65°F, air at 14% humidity, a 6 mph wind out of the east.

How it got here

One day of record on a day-37 fire

The record here begins at 2:42pm on 9 Sep and runs to 2:42pm on 9 Sep — 0 hours, 7 readings of heat. The fire is on day 37, so the first 36 days are missing: nothing showed up from above until the fire was large enough and the sky over it clear enough for it to be seen. There is no long arc to draw yet. What follows is what has actually happened.

Animated map of the Belmont Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 7 frames at 1 hour a frame. The bar along the bottom is energy released; the moving line is the clock.

Hour by hour local time

Wed 2:00pmWed 2:00pm

Each bar is one hour of local time, sized by how much energy the fire gave off in it. This fire is too young for a day-against-day comparison to say anything, so the hours are shown instead.

Day by day 1 day of record

  1. Map for Wed 9 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Wed9 Seplatest

    First readings

    • 7 heat readings
    • Heat from 2:42pm to 2:42pm
    • Spread 0.7 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon

How the record has moved

Each step is a change on the interagency incident record — acreage, containment or crews — with the date it was reported. No satellite reading is involved.

  1. Wednesday 9 September

    First reported

  2. Wednesday 9 September

    3 acres on record

    3 ac

  3. Wednesday 9 September

    Grew to 11 acres

    11 ac

  4. Wednesday 9 September

    Grew to 30 acres

    30 ac

  5. Wednesday 9 September

    Grew to 85 acres

    85 ac

  6. Wednesday 9 September

    Grew to 137 acres

    137 ac

No containment figure has been reported for it yet. No crew count has been published for it yet. It has grown from 0 acres when it was first written down to 137 now. Nothing has looked at it for 858 hours, and the record still lists it as active.