Bald Fire (2014): mapping the 39,736-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Bald Fire spans about 15.0 km from west to east and 18.2 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at 8 miles southeast of Fall River Mills. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE30 July 2014
County listingShasta
Reported area in hectares16,081 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline15.0 × 18.2 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive15 August 2014
Bald Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 15.0 by 18.2 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 3.2 km. That does not make this a circular burn: the dimensions measure the outermost coordinates, leaving indentations and gaps invisible. Use the polygon itself, rather than its enclosing rectangle, to check whether a location intersects the footprint.

Two estimates of area

The incident report gives 39,736 acres; the interagency feature stores 39,752.0 GIS acres. The mapped value is 16.0 acres above the reported value (0.04%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Stone Fire of 2018 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (39,387 acres). Its mapped spans are 19.2 by 16.2 km, west–east then south–north, versus 15.0 by 18.2 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.

Sources and map method

Spans use the geographic extremes of a generalized boundary, converted to kilometres at its middle latitude. They are approximate map dimensions, not distances travelled by flames. The GIS acreage is the source attribute, not an area recalculated from the simplified outline.