Powerhouse Fire (2013): mapping the 30,274-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Powerhouse Fire spans about 17.3 km from west to east and 18.6 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Angeles National Forest. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE30 May 2013
County listingLos Angeles
Reported area in hectares12,251 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline17.3 × 18.6 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive8 June 2013
Powerhouse Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 17.3 by 18.6 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 1.2 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 30,274 acres; the interagency feature stores 30,267.7 GIS acres. The mapped value is 6.3 acres below the reported value (0.02%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Cedar Fire of 2016 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (29,322 acres). Its mapped spans are 18.4 by 15.6 km, west–east then south–north, versus 17.3 by 18.6 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.