Awatchfire

Whitman County, Washington

Palouse River Fire

Burning 3.6 miles south of Colfax and 6.1 miles north-west of Albion, since Saturday 8 August.

Map of Washington. The Palouse River Fire burns 55 miles from Spokane and 153 miles from Ellensburg, and 264 miles from the state capital, Olympia.
The fire sits 55 miles from Spokane and 153 miles from Ellensburg.

637

acres burned so far — about 1.0 square miles

67

days burning so far

100%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Palouse River Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 236 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 236 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Palouse River 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

236hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 1:20pm on Monday, local time.

0readings

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

2.6miles

is how close the heat has come to Colfax 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 Albion is 6.0 miles, None in the last day.

3.1miles

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 six times so far. The thickest of it was moderate between 1:00pm and 4:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 17 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

Three days of record on a day-69 fire

The record here begins at 2:01pm on 22 Sep and runs to 1:19pm on 5 Oct — 311 hours, 4 readings of heat. The fire is on day 69, so the first 66 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 Palouse River Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 106 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 Tue 22 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Tue22 Sep

    First readings

    • 1 heat readings
    • Heat from 2:01pm to 2:01pm
    • Spread 3.1 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon
  2. Map for Fri 2 Oct: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Fri2 Oct

    Holding

    • 1 heat readings
    • Energy 1.0 times the day before
    • Heat from 2:14pm to 2:14pm
    • Spread 1.0 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon
  3. Map for Mon 5 Oct: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Mon5 Octlatest

    The fiercest day

    • 2 heat readings — the most of any day
    • Energy 13.5 times the day before
    • Heat from 1:19pm to 1:19pm
    • 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. Saturday 8 August

    First reported at 200 acres

    200 ac

  2. Sunday 23 August

    637 acres on record — 100% contained, 57 personnel assigned

    637 ac · 100% held · 57 crew

100% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 57 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 200 acres when it was first written down to 637 now. Nothing has looked at it for 236 hours, and the record still lists it as active.