Awatchfire

Columbia County, Washington

Ruchert Fire

Burning 19.4 miles south-east of Dayton and 19.7 miles south of Pomeroy, since Saturday 17 October.

Map of Washington. The Ruchert Fire burns 103 miles from Spokane and 143 miles from Yakima, and 257 miles from the state capital, Olympia.
The fire sits 103 miles from Spokane and 143 miles from Yakima.

5

acres burned so far

18

hours burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 11:52am today

The Ruchert Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. The last heat was seen 8 hours ago.

No fresh look at this fire for 8 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Ruchert 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

8hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:25am on Sunday, local time.

1readings

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

19.3miles

is how close the heat has come to Dayton at any point in the record. In the last day the nearest heat has been 19.3 miles from it, and the closest this fire has come to Pomeroy is 19.6 miles, 19.6 in the last day. The two figures are the same because the record is barely a day long: the last day is very nearly all of it.

0.1miles

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 three times so far. The thickest of it was moderate between 1:00pm and 4:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 91 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 21.5 miles from the fire: 42°F, air at 62% humidity, a 3 mph wind out of the west.

How it got here

One day of record on a day-2 fire

The record here begins at 3:26am on 18 Oct and runs to 3:26am on 18 Oct — 0 hours, 1 readings of heat. The fire is on day 2, so the first day is 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 Ruchert 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

Sun 3:00amSun 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 Sun 18 Oct: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Sun18 Octlatest

    First readings

    • 1 heat readings
    • Heat from 3:26am to 3:26am
    • Spread 0.1 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. Saturday 17 October

    First reported at 2 acres

    2 ac

  2. Sunday 18 October

    2 acres on record

    2 ac

  3. Sunday 18 October

    Grew to 15 acres

    15 ac

  4. Sunday 18 October

    Revised to 5 acres

    5 ac

No containment figure has been reported for it yet. No crew count has been published for it yet. It has grown from 2 acres when it was first written down to 5 now. Nothing has looked at it for 8 hours, and the record still lists it as active.