The archived outline of the Canyon Fire spans about 9.8 km from west to east and 8.7 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Santa Ynez Ridge Road and Egress Road, south side of Vandenberg Air Force Base. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 17 September 2016 |
|---|---|
| County listing | Santa Barbara |
| Reported area in hectares | 5,066 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 9.8 × 8.7 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 27 September 2016 |
What the perimeter shows
The two spans differ by only 1.0 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 12,518 acres; the interagency feature stores 12,713.6 GIS acres. The mapped value is 195.6 acres above the reported value (1.56%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Railroad Fire of 2017 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (12,407 acres). Its mapped spans are 10.3 by 10.7 km, west–east then south–north, versus 9.8 by 8.7 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.
Sources and map method
- Canyon Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Railroad 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.