Awatchfire

Kittitas County, Washington

Cove Road Fire

Burning 5.0 miles west of Ellensburg and 5.2 miles south of Thorp, since Friday 19 June.

Map of Washington. The Cove Road Fire burns 5 miles from Ellensburg and 28 miles from Yakima, and 106 miles from the state capital, Olympia.
The fire sits 5 miles from Ellensburg and 28 miles from Yakima.

0

acres burned so far

117

days burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Cove Road Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 257 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 257 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Cove Road 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

257hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:50pm on Sunday, local time.

43% less

energy in the last 1.5 hours of the record than in the 1.5 before them — the fire was cooler when it was last seen.

6.3miles

is how close the heat has come to Ellensburg 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 Thorp is 3.0 miles, None in the last day.

2.7miles

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 two times so far. The thickest of it was thin between 1:10pm and 4:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 209 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 18.5 miles from the fire: 47°F, air at 72% humidity, a 2 mph wind out of the south.

How it got here

One day of record on a day-119 fire

The record here begins at 12:51pm on 4 Oct and runs to 3:52pm on 4 Oct — 3 hours, 7 readings of heat. The fire is on day 119, so the first 118 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 Cove Road Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 10 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

Sun 12:00pmSun 3:00pm

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 Sun 4 Oct: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Sun4 Octlatest

    First readings

    • 7 heat readings
    • Heat from 12:51pm to 3:52pm
    • Spread 2.7 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. Friday 19 June

    First reported

  2. Tuesday 8 September

    0 acres on record

    0 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 0 now. Nothing has looked at it for 257 hours, and the record still lists it as active.