Deer Fire (2013): mapping the 11,429-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Deer Fire spans about 9.1 km from west to east and 9.7 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Near Deer Creek, 12 miles east of Los Molinos. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE23 August 2013
County listingTehama
Reported area in hectares4,625 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline9.1 × 9.7 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive29 August 2013
Deer Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 9.1 by 9.7 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 0.7 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 11,429 acres; the interagency feature stores 11,428.8 GIS acres. The mapped value is 0.2 acres below the reported value (0.00%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Waverly Fire of 2018 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (11,789 acres). Its mapped spans are 16.4 by 12.0 km, west–east then south–north, versus 9.1 by 9.7 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.