Awatchfire

Las Animas County, Colorado

Sw3 Fire

Burning 8.1 miles north of Raton and 10.2 miles south-east of Starkville, since Wednesday 2 September.

Map of Colorado. The Sw3 Fire burns 193 miles from Denver, and 193 miles from the state capital, Denver.
The fire sits 193 miles from Denver.

145

acres burned so far

42

days burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 10:09am today

The Sw3 Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 991 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 991 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Sw3 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

991hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 3:30am on Friday, local time.

0readings

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

8.1miles

is how close the heat has come to Raton 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 Starkville is 9.6 miles, None in the last day.

0.6miles

is the furthest any heat has been seen from the point on the official record — the width of the ground involved so far.

Three other fires are burning inside the same view. IA 1711 - Little Fisher's Mesa Fire started on Tuesday 8 September, 3.2 miles north-east, and has reached 0 acres. Lake Dorothy 4 Fire started on Tuesday 8 September, 2.2 miles east, and has reached 0 acres. Schwachheim Fire started on Sunday 12 April, 2.1 miles east, and has reached 1,582 acres with 1 people assigned. Their heat is counted against them, not against this fire, and the pale rings on the map mark where they are recorded.

One larger fire is burning outside this frame: Post Fire 5.7 miles north at 4,335 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 121 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-44 fire

The record here begins at 1:47pm on 2 Sep and runs to 3:30am on 4 Sep — 38 hours, 28 readings of heat. The fire is on day 44, so the first 41 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 Sw3 Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 15 frames at 3 hours a frame. The bar along the bottom is energy released; the moving line is the clock.

Hour by hour local time

Wed 1:00pmFri 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 3 days of record

  1. Map for Wed 2 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Wed2 Sep

    First readings

    • 1 heat readings
    • Heat from 1:47pm to 1:47pm
    • Spread 0.1 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon
  2. Map for Thu 3 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Thu3 Sep

    The fiercest day

    • 15 heat readings — the most of any day
    • Energy 7.8 times the day before
    • Heat from 2:07am to 3:49am
    • Spread 0.5 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the pre-dawn
  3. Map for Fri 4 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Fri4 Seplatest

    Today so far

    • 12 heat readings
    • Energy 18% down on the day before
    • Heat from 1:50am to 3:30am
    • Spread 0.6 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. Wednesday 2 September

    First reported

  2. Wednesday 2 September

    0 acres on record

    0 ac

  3. Wednesday 2 September

    Grew to 25 acres

    25 ac

  4. Thursday 3 September

    Grew to 63 acres

    63 ac

  5. Friday 4 September

    Grew to 85 acres

    85 ac

  6. Friday 11 September

    Grew to 145 acres

    145 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 145 now. Nothing has looked at it for 991 hours, and the record still lists it as active.