Wildfires of 2013

Horse Butte 2 Fire

2013Owyhee County, IdahoWildfire

The Horse Butte 2 Fire burned 5,681 acres in Owyhee County, Idaho, in 2013. It was discovered on July 16, 2013, and contained on July 20, 2013. The cause was recorded as natural.

Size
5,681 acres
Discovered
July 16, 2013
Contained
July 20, 2013
Cause
Natural

Map

The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 5,326 acres. Point of origin as reported, 42.366, -115.236.

The record

Reported final size
5,681 acres
Burned area mapped by MTBS
5,326 acres
Area inside the final perimeter
5,446 acres
Discovered
July 16, 2013, 5:34 p.m. local time
Contained
July 20, 2013, 6:00 p.m. local time
Cause
Natural
State
Idaho
County
Owyhee County
Land ownership at origin
Bureau of Land Management
Reporting unit
Twin Falls District
Agency
Bureau of Land Management
Unit
IDTFD
Incident type
Wildfire
Unique fire identifier
2013-IDJRD-000207
MTBS fire identifier
ID4235011523620130716
MTBS assessment
Initial
Fire occurrence record
W-658200
Perimeter map method
GPS-Flight
Note on the perimeter
iPad

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.

From the incident teams’ reports

The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 5, from July 16, 2013 to July 20, 2013. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.

Most personnel assigned
59 on July 17, 2013
Most aircraft assigned
1
Cost reported by the teams
$75,000, in 2013 dollars
Cause on the reports
Lightning or other natural
Primary fuel model reported
Brush (2 feet)
Suppression strategy reported
Full suppression

Acres reported by day

The largest rise between two days’ reports was 2,400 acres, on July 17, 2013.

Acres at the last status summary of each day. Days with no report are not shown.
Reported acres by day, as a table
DayAcresChange from the day before
Jul 16, 20132,500
Jul 17, 20134,900+2,400
Jul 18, 20134,9000
Jul 19, 20135,681+781
Jul 20, 20135,6810

Other large fires in Idaho in 201312

FireAcresStartCause
Pony Complex135,231Aug 8, 2013Natural
Elk Complex129,730Aug 8, 2013Natural
Beaver Creek Fire111,497Aug 7, 2013Natural
Little Queens Fire23,406Aug 17, 2013Human
Mccan Fire23,389Aug 7, 2013Natural
Lodgepole Fire22,825Jul 20, 2013Natural
Raft Fire20,395Aug 29, 2013Natural
Kelley Fire17,349Aug 24, 2013Natural
Jim Brown Fire14,404Jul 1, 2013Natural
Thunder City Fire13,263Jul 19, 2013Natural
Southeast Red Bridge Fire9,499Jul 31, 2013Natural
Papoose Fire9,493Jul 8, 2013Natural

Every fire of 2013 Idaho 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. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. 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. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.