Awatchfire

Tulare County, California

Flat Fire

Burning 2.1 miles north of California Hot Springs and 6.2 miles north-west of Sugarloaf Saw Mill, since Thursday 24 September.

Map of California. The Flat Fire burns 240 miles from Sacramento, and 240 miles from the state capital, Sacramento.
The fire sits 240 miles from Sacramento.

0

acres burned so far

20

days burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Flat Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 499 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 499 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Flat 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

499hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 2:15pm on Thursday, local time.

0readings

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

2.0miles

is how close the heat has come to California Hot Springs 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 Sugarloaf Saw Mill is 6.1 miles, None in the last day.

0.1miles

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 1:00pm and 4:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 137 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 2.2 miles from the fire: 50°F, air at 39% humidity, a 3 mph wind out of the east.

How it got here

One day of record on a day-22 fire

The record here begins at 2:16pm on 24 Sep and runs to 2:16pm on 24 Sep — 0 hours, 2 readings of heat. The fire is on day 22, so the first 21 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 Flat 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

Thu 2:00pmThu 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 Thu 24 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Thu24 Seplatest

    First readings

    • 2 heat readings
    • Heat from 2:16pm to 2:16pm
    • Spread 0.1 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. Thursday 24 September

    First reported

  2. Thursday 24 September

    0 acres on record

    0 ac

  3. Thursday 24 September

    Grew to 0 acres

    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 499 hours, and the record still lists it as active.