The archived outline of the Donnell Fire spans about 23.3 km from west to east and 16.6 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Near Hwy 108, Donnell Lake area in the Carson Iceburg Wilderness. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 1 August 2018 |
|---|---|
| County listing | Tuolumne |
| Reported area in hectares | 14,751 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 23.3 × 16.6 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 4 January 2019 |
| Perimeter collection method as recorded | Infrared Interpretation |
What the perimeter shows
The two spans differ by only 6.7 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 36,450 acres; the interagency feature stores 36,461.4 GIS acres. The mapped value is 11.4 acres above the reported value (0.03%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Pier Fire of 2017 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (36,556 acres). Its mapped spans are 16.1 by 15.6 km, west–east then south–north, versus 23.3 by 16.6 km here. The broad proportions are comparable. That does not establish that fuel, wind or suppression tactics were similar.
Sources and map method
- Donnell Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Pier Fire · comparison incident
- Comparison perimeter · interagency record
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.