Taboose Fire (2019): mapping the 10,296-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Taboose Fire spans about 8.5 km from west to east and 9.5 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at south west of Big Pine and north west of Aberdeen. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE6 September 2019
County listingInyo
Reported area in hectares4,167 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline8.5 × 9.5 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive21 November 2019
Perimeter collection method as recordedGPS – Uncorrected Data
Taboose Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 8.5 by 9.5 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

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 10,296 acres; the interagency feature stores 10,267.6 GIS acres. The mapped value is 28.4 acres below the reported value (0.28%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Dodge Fire of 2015 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (10,570 acres). Its mapped spans are 9.1 by 10.8 km, west–east then south–north, versus 8.5 by 9.5 km here. The broad proportions are comparable. That does not establish that fuel, wind or suppression tactics were similar.

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.