Awatchfire

Carbon County, Wyoming

Chalk Mountain Fire

Burning 16.6 miles south-east of Alcova and 26.0 miles south of Bessemer Bend, since Wednesday 26 August.

Map of Wyoming. The Chalk Mountain Fire burns 124 miles from Cheyenne, and 124 miles from the state capital, Cheyenne.
The fire sits 124 miles from Cheyenne.

124

acres burned so far

2

days burning so far

75%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 2:52pm today

The Chalk Mountain Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 36 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 36 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Chalk Mountain 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

36hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:25am on Thursday, local time.

0readings

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

16.3miles

is how close the heat has come to Alcova 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 Bessemer Bend is 25.8 miles, None in the last day.

0.3miles

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 five times so far. The thickest of it was thin between 2:00pm and 5:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 21 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 24.2 miles from the fire: 75°F, air at 27% humidity, a 13 mph wind out of the south-west.

How it got here

Two days of record on a day-3 fire

The record here begins at 2:02pm on 26 Aug and runs to 3:24am on 27 Aug — 13 hours, 10 readings of heat. The fire is on day 3, so the first day is 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 Chalk Mountain Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 20 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 2:00pmThu 3:00am

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 2 days of record

  1. Map for Wed 26 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Wed26 Aug

    First readings

    • 6 heat readings — the most of any day
    • Heat from 2:02pm to 2:21pm
    • Spread 0.3 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon
  2. Map for Thu 27 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Thu27 Auglatest

    Cooling off

    • 4 heat readings
    • Energy 98% down on the day before
    • Heat from 2:20am to 3:24am
    • Spread 0.3 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn

75% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 35 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 5 acres when it was first written down to 124 now. Nothing has looked at it for 36 hours, and the record still lists it as active.