Awatchfire

Whitman County, Washington

Wells Road Fire

Burning 1.9 miles west of Malden and 6.3 miles west of Rosalia, since Saturday 8 August.

Map of Washington. The Wells Road Fire burns 30 miles from Spokane and 144 miles from Ellensburg, and 253 miles from the state capital, Olympia.
The fire sits 30 miles from Spokane and 144 miles from Ellensburg.

1,865

acres burned so far — about 3 square miles

67

days burning so far

100%

of the perimeter held

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Wells Road Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. Nothing has given off fresh heat for 859 hours.

No fresh look at this fire for 859 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Wells Road 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

859hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 2:00pm on Wednesday, local time.

0readings

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

0.6miles

is how close the heat has come to Malden 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 Rosalia is 4.7 miles, None in the last day.

1.5miles

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 thin between 1:10pm and 4:30pm local time. The last of those windows closed 41 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 12.3 miles from the fire: 60°F, air at 46% humidity, a 7 mph wind out of the east.

How it got here

One day of record on a day-69 fire

The record here begins at 1:42pm on 9 Sep and runs to 1:59pm on 9 Sep — 0 hours, 3 readings of heat. The fire is on day 69, so the first 68 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 Wells Road 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

Wed 1:00pmWed 1:00pm

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 Wed 9 Sep: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Wed9 Seplatest

    First readings

    • 3 heat readings
    • Heat from 1:42pm to 1:59pm
    • Spread 1.5 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

    1,865 acres on record — 100% contained, 99 personnel assigned

    1,865 ac · 100% held · 99 crew

100% of the perimeter is being reported as held. 99 people are assigned to it. It has grown from 200 acres when it was first written down to 1,865 now. Nothing has looked at it for 859 hours, and the record still lists it as active.