Awatchfire

Malheur County, Oregon

Mitchell Springs Fire

Burning 11.2 miles north-west of McDermitt and 15.6 miles north-west of Fort McDermitt, since Monday 24 August.

Map of Oregon. The Mitchell Springs Fire burns 185 miles from Baker City and 219 miles from Bend, and 323 miles from the state capital, Salem.
The fire sits 185 miles from Baker City and 219 miles from Bend.

5,444

acres burned so far — about 9 square miles

3

days burning so far

25%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 2:52pm today

The Mitchell Springs Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 46 hours. What is burning has shifted 1.33 miles south over the last six hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 46 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Mitchell Springs 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

46hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 4:40pm on Wednesday, local time.

978% more

energy in the last 6 hours of the record than in the 6 before them — the fire was hotter when it was last seen.

11.0miles

is how close the heat has come to McDermitt 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 Fort McDermitt is 15.3 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.

Smoke has been recorded lying over this ground nine times so far. The thickest of it was moderate between 11:00am and 2:00pm local time. The last of those windows closed 30 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

Two days of record on a day-5 fire

The record here begins at 3:25pm on 25 Aug and runs to 4:42pm on 26 Aug — 25 hours, 99 readings of heat. The fire is on day 5, so the first 3 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 Mitchell Springs Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 32 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 3:00pmWed 4:00pm

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 2 days of record

  1. Map for Tue 25 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Tue25 Aug

    First readings

    • 4 heat readings
    • Heat from 3:25pm to 3:25pm
    • Spread 0.9 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon
  2. Map for Wed 26 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Wed26 Auglatest

    The fiercest day

    • 95 heat readings — the most of any day
    • Energy 12.0 times the day before
    • Heat from 2:58am to 4:42pm
    • Spread 2.8 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn, morning and afternoon

25% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 89 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 5 acres when it was first written down to 5,444 now. Nothing has looked at it for 46 hours, and the record still lists it as active.