Awatchfire

Morrow County, Oregon

Ruggs Fire

Burning 9.3 miles south-west of Heppner and 13.3 miles south of Lexington, since Monday 31 August.

Map of Oregon. The Ruggs Fire burns 97 miles from Baker City and 115 miles from Bend, and 164 miles from the state capital, Salem.
The fire sits 97 miles from Baker City and 115 miles from Bend.

1,300

acres burned so far — about 2 square miles

44

days burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Ruggs Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 1074 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 1074 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Ruggs 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

1074hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 2:50pm on Monday, local time.

67% less

energy in the last 1.1 hours of the record than in the 1.1 before them — the fire was cooler when it was last seen.

9.9miles

is how close the heat has come to Heppner 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 Lexington is 14.6 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 once so far. The thickest of it was thin between 1:10pm and 4:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 233 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-46 fire

The record here begins at 12:34pm on 31 Aug and runs to 2:50pm on 31 Aug — 2 hours, 33 readings of heat. The fire is on day 46, so the first 45 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 Ruggs Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 9 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 12:00pmMon 2:00pm

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 1 day of record

  1. Map for Mon 31 Aug: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Mon31 Auglatest

    First readings

    • 33 heat readings
    • Heat from 12:34pm to 2:50pm
    • Spread 3.1 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. Monday 31 August

    First reported

  2. Monday 31 August

    0 acres on record

    0 ac

  3. Monday 31 August

    Grew to 650 acres

    650 ac

  4. Tuesday 1 September

    Grew to 1,300 acres

    1,300 ac

No containment figure has been reported for it yet. No crew count has been published for it yet. It has grown from 0 acres when it was first written down to 1,300 now. Nothing has looked at it for 1074 hours, and the record still lists it as active.