Wildfires of 1987

Sterling Gulch Fire

1987MontanaWildfire

The Sterling Gulch Fire burned 1,805 acres in Montana, in 1987. MTBS dates its ignition to July 15, 1987.

Size
1,805 acres
Ignition
July 15, 1987

Map

The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 1,805 acres. MTBS's point for the fire, 48.254, -115.236.

The record

Burned area mapped by MTBS
1,805 acres
Area inside the final perimeter
1,816 acres
Ignition (MTBS)
July 15, 1987
State
Montana
Agency
Forest Service
Unit
MTNWS
Incident type
Wildfire
MTBS fire identifier
MT4825411523619870715
MTBS assessment
Extended
Perimeter map method
Digitized Other
Note on the perimeter
Plum Creek, MT State, FS

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 Montana in 19873

FireAcresStartCause
Mud Lake Fire2,338Apr 7, 1987
NoName Fire1,100
G 15 A B Fire1,070Apr 21, 1987

Every fire of 1987 Montana 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.