The archived outline of the Elm Fire spans about 8.9 km from west to east and 9.0 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at off of Hwy 198 & Fire Stone, south of Coalinga. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 18 May 2017 |
|---|---|
| County listing | Fresno |
| Reported area in hectares | 4,047 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 8.9 × 9.0 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 9 January 2018 |
What the perimeter shows
The two spans differ by only 0.1 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 10,000 acres; the interagency feature stores 11,146.7 GIS acres. The mapped value is 1,146.7 acres above the reported value (11.47%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Maria Fire of 2019 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (9,999 acres). Its mapped spans are 10.5 by 8.1 km, west–east then south–north, versus 8.9 by 9.0 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.
Sources and map method
- Elm Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Maria 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.