Wildfires of 1986

Big Joe Fire

1986ColoradoWildfire

The Big Joe Fire burned 2,536 acres in Colorado, in 1986. MTBS dates its ignition to August 16, 1986.

Size
2,536 acres
Ignition
August 16, 1986

Map

The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 2,536 acres. MTBS's point for the fire, 40.829, -108.819.

The record

Burned area mapped by MTBS
2,536 acres
Area inside the final perimeter
3,517 acres
Ignition (MTBS)
August 16, 1986
State
Colorado
Agency
Bureau of Land Management
Unit
COLSD
Incident type
Wildfire
MTBS fire identifier
CO4082910881919860816
MTBS assessment
Extended

The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.

Other large fires in Colorado in 19865

FireAcresStartCause
Unnamed Fire25,753Mar 26, 1986
Unnamed Fire6,206Aug 5, 1986
Westtoe Fire5,390Jun 21, 1986
Hogan Fire5,300Jun 21, 1986
Long Fire1,190Aug 9, 1986

Every fire of 1986 Colorado fire history

Nearby

Sources

Perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Interagency Fire Perimeter History, compiled from the Forest Service, BLM, BIA, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the Alaska Interagency Fire Center and CAL FIRE. Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree.