Awatchfire

Las Animas County, Colorado

Post Fire

Burning 6.1 miles south-east of Starkville and 7.4 miles south-east of Trinidad, since Tuesday 11 August.

Map of Colorado. The Post Fire burns 187 miles from Denver, and 187 miles from the state capital, Denver.
The fire sits 187 miles from Denver.

4,335

acres burned so far — about 7 square miles

64

days burning so far

100%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 1:56pm today

The Post Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 923 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 923 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Post 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

923hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:15am on Monday, local time.

0readings

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

6.4miles

is how close the heat has come to Starkville 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 Trinidad is 8.4 miles, None in the last day.

1.6miles

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. IA 1711 - Little Fisher's Mesa Fire started on Tuesday 8 September, 3.3 miles south-east, and has reached 0 acres. Its heat is counted against it, not against this fire, and the pale ring on the map marks where it is recorded.

One larger fire is burning outside this frame: Schwachheim Fire 5.6 miles south-east at 1,582 acres. None of their heat is counted here.

Smoke has been recorded lying over this ground once so far. The thickest of it was thin between 6:00am and 9:00am local time. The last of those windows closed 125 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-66 fire

The record here begins at 3:17am on 7 Sep and runs to 3:17am on 7 Sep — 0 hours, 1 readings of heat. The fire is on day 66, so the first 65 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 Post 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

Mon 3:00amMon 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 1 day of record

  1. Map for Mon 7 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Mon7 Seplatest

    First readings

    • 1 heat readings
    • Heat from 3:17am to 3:17am
    • Spread 1.6 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. Tuesday 11 August

    First reported at 1,000 acres

    1,000 ac

  2. Sunday 23 August

    4,343 acres on record — 90% contained, 1 personnel assigned

    4,343 ac · 90% held · 1 crew

  3. Thursday 3 September

    Revised to 4,335 acres

    4,335 ac · 90% held · 1 crew

  4. Thursday 8 October

    Containment 95%

    4,335 ac · 95% held · 1 crew

  5. Thursday 15 October

    Containment 100%

    4,335 ac · 100% held · 1 crew

100% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 1 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 1,000 acres when it was first written down to 4,335 now. Nothing has looked at it for 923 hours, and the record still lists it as active.