Lone Fire (2019): mapping the 5,737-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Lone Fire spans about 8.7 km from west to east and 5.1 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Pinnacle Lake, Doublehead Ranger district, Modoc 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 FIRE6 September 2019
County listingModoc
Reported area in hectares2,322 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline8.7 × 5.1 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive13 September 2019
Perimeter collection method as recordedGPS – Differentially Corrected Data
Lone Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 8.7 by 5.1 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The longer dimension runs east–west and is about 1.7 times the shorter one. A circular buffer drawn around the incident point would hide that difference. A road or settlement at the same distance from the point could fall inside or outside the mapped footprint depending on its direction.

Two estimates of area

The incident report gives 5,737 acres; the interagency feature stores 5,737.2 GIS acres. The mapped value is 0.2 acres above 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 Cold Fire of 2016 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (5,731 acres). Its mapped spans are 7.6 by 4.9 km, west–east then south–north, versus 8.7 by 5.1 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.