Awatchfire

Stanley County, South Dakota

Four Corner Fire

Burning 23.0 miles east of Cherry Creek and 28.0 miles west of Cow Creek, since Tuesday 8 September.

Map of South Dakota. The Four Corner Fire burns .
Where the fire is in the state.

665

acres burned so far — about 1.0 square miles

36

days burning so far

100%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 10:09am today

The Four Corner Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 883 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 883 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Four Corner 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 Where another fire is recorded

883hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:00pm on Tuesday, local time.

99% less

energy in the last 0.5 hours of the record than in the 0.5 before them — the fire was cooler when it was last seen.

22.1miles

is how close the heat has come to Cherry Creek 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 Cow Creek is 27.1 miles, None in the last day.

1.1miles

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

Two other fires are burning inside the same view. Buffalo Fire started on Saturday 25 July, 3.4 miles north-east, and has reached an unrecorded size. Larry Fire started 80 minutes after this one, 0.0 miles north, and has reached 0 acres. Their heat is counted against them, not against this fire, and the pale rings on the map mark where they are recorded.

Smoke has been recorded lying over this ground ten times so far. The thickest of it was moderate between 9:00am and 11:00am local time. The last of those windows closed 113 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.

Nothing close enough to the fire has reported the conditions on the ground.

How it got here

One day of record on a day-38 fire

The record here begins at 2:21pm on 8 Sep and runs to 2:59pm on 8 Sep — 1 hours, 33 readings of heat. The fire is on day 38, so the first 37 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 Four Corner 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

Tue 2:00pmTue 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 Tue 8 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Tue8 Seplatest

    First readings

    • 33 heat readings
    • Heat from 2:21pm to 2:59pm
    • Spread 1.1 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. Tuesday 8 September

    First reported

  2. Tuesday 8 September

    0 acres on record

    0 ac

  3. Tuesday 8 September

    Grew to 665 acres

    665 ac

  4. Wednesday 9 September

    Containment 100% — 44 personnel

    665 ac · 100% held · 44 crew

100% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 44 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 0 acres when it was first written down to 665 now. Nothing has looked at it for 883 hours, and the record still lists it as active.