Awatchfire

Washakie County, Wyoming

Cow Camp Fire

Burning 19.5 miles south-east of Ten Sleep and 28.2 miles west of Kaycee, since Thursday 3 September.

Map of Wyoming. The Cow Camp Fire burns 223 miles from Cheyenne, and 223 miles from the state capital, Cheyenne.
The fire sits 223 miles from Cheyenne.

244

acres burned so far

42

days burning so far

95%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 3:20am today

The Cow Camp Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 960 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 960 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Cow Camp 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

960hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:35am on Sunday, local time.

0readings

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

18.6miles

is how close the heat has come to Ten Sleep 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 Kaycee is 28.7 miles, None in the last day.

1.2miles

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 four times so far. The thickest of it was thin between 6:20am and 9:00am local time. The last of those windows closed 157 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 20.6 miles from the fire: 27°F, air at 64% humidity, a 8 mph wind out of the south.

How it got here

Three days of record on a day-44 fire

The record here begins at 3:09am on 4 Sep and runs to 3:37am on 6 Sep — 48 hours, 34 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 Cow Camp 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 Fri 4 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Fri4 Sep

    First readings

    • 31 heat readings — the most of any day
    • Heat from 3:09am to 3:53pm
    • Spread 1.2 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn and afternoon
  2. Map for Sat 5 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Sat5 Sep

    Cooling off

    • 1 heat readings
    • Energy 100% down on the day before
    • Heat from 3:09am to 3:09am
    • Spread 0.9 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn
  3. Map for Sun 6 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Sun6 Seplatest

    Flaring up

    • 2 heat readings
    • Energy 2.0 times the day before
    • Heat from 2:52am to 3:37am
    • Spread 0.9 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn

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. Thursday 3 September

    First reported

  2. Thursday 3 September

    0 acres on record

    0 ac

  3. Thursday 3 September

    Grew to 55 acres

    55 ac

  4. Thursday 3 September

    Grew to 100 acres

    100 ac

  5. Thursday 3 September

    Grew to 250 acres

    250 ac

  6. Friday 4 September

    Grew to 300 acres — containment 1%, 150 personnel

    300 ac · 1% held · 150 crew

  7. Saturday 5 September

    Revised to 282 acres — 123 personnel

    282 ac · 1% held · 123 crew

  8. Sunday 6 September

    Containment 43% — 150 personnel

    282 ac · 43% held · 150 crew

  9. Wednesday 9 September

    Revised to 244 acres — containment 76%, 60 personnel

    244 ac · 76% held · 60 crew

  10. Thursday 10 September

    Containment 95% — 24 personnel

    244 ac · 95% held · 24 crew

95% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 24 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 0 acres when it was first written down to 244 now. Nothing has looked at it for 960 hours, and the record still lists it as active.