Awatchfire

Kern County, California

Hillcrest Fire

Burning 5.8 miles north-west of Valley Acres and 6.7 miles west of Tupman, since Monday 31 August.

Map of California. The Hillcrest Fire burns 253 miles from Sacramento, and 253 miles from the state capital, Sacramento.
The fire sits 253 miles from Sacramento.

—

acreage not yet reported

44

days burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Hillcrest Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 1062 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 1062 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Hillcrest 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

1062hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:30am on Tuesday, local time.

0readings

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

5.9miles

is how close the heat has come to Valley Acres 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 Tupman is 7.0 miles, None in the last day.

2.8miles

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

Another fire is burning inside the same view. Scenic Fire started on Saturday 5 September, 3.0 miles north-west, and has reached an unrecorded size. Its heat is counted against it, not against this fire, and the pale ring on the map marks where it is recorded.

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 185 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 20.9 miles from the fire: 67°F, air at 30% humidity, a 8 mph wind out of the south-east.

How it got here

Two days of record on a day-46 fire

The record here begins at 2:48pm on 31 Aug and runs to 3:28am on 1 Sep — 13 hours, 6 readings of heat. The fire is on day 46, so the first 44 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 Hillcrest 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

Mon 2:00pmTue 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 Mon 31 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Mon31 Aug

    First readings

    • 4 heat readings — the most of any day
    • Heat from 2:48pm to 3:05pm
    • Spread 2.8 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon
  2. Map for Tue 1 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Tue1 Seplatest

    Cooling off

    • 2 heat readings
    • Energy 98% down on the day before
    • Heat from 3:09am to 3:28am
    • Spread 0.3 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. Monday 31 August

    First reported

No containment figure has been reported for it yet. No crew count has been published for it yet. Nothing has looked at it for 1062 hours, and the record still lists it as active.