Awatchfire

Whatcom County, Washington

Border 2 Fire

Burning 36.7 miles north-east of Marblemount, since Thursday 16 July.

Map of Washington. The Border 2 Fire burns 68 miles from Bellingham and 113 miles from Seattle, and 160 miles from the state capital, Olympia.
The fire sits 68 miles from Bellingham and 113 miles from Seattle.

7,864

acres burned so far — about 12 square miles

42

days burning so far

42%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 1:52pm today

The Border 2 Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 35 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 35 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Border 2 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

35hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:15am on Thursday, local time.

0readings

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

33.7miles

is how close the heat has come to Marblemount at any point in the record. In the last day the nearest heat has been None miles from it.

3.1miles

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

One larger fire is burning outside this frame: Luna Fire 14.8 miles south-west at 5,039 acres. None of their heat is counted here.

Smoke has been recorded lying over this ground 32 times so far. The thickest of it was thick between 5:00am and 8:00am local time.

Where the heat is

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

Conditions measured 2.6 miles from the fire: 69°F, air at 53% humidity, a 2 mph wind out of the south-west.

How it got here

Three days of record on a day-44 fire

The record here begins at 3:00am on 25 Aug and runs to 3:17am on 27 Aug — 48 hours, 8 readings of heat. The fire is on day 44, so the first 41 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.

Animated map of the Border 2 Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 19 frames at 3 hours a frame. The bar along the bottom is energy released; the moving line is the clock.

Day by day 3 days of record

  1. Map for Tue 25 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Tue25 Aug

    First readings

    • 1 heat readings
    • Heat from 3:00am to 3:00am
    • Spread 3.0 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn
  2. Map for Wed 26 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Wed26 Aug

    The fiercest day

    • 5 heat readings — the most of any day
    • Energy 7.0 times the day before
    • Heat from 2:43am to 3:36am
    • Spread 3.1 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn
  3. Map for Thu 27 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Thu27 Auglatest

    Cooling off

    • 2 heat readings
    • Energy 71% down on the day before
    • Heat from 2:58am to 3:17am
    • Spread 3.1 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn

42% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 37 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 0 acres when it was first written down to 7,864 now. Nothing has looked at it for 35 hours, and the record still lists it as active.