Frog Fire (2015): mapping the 4,863-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Frog Fire spans about 9.1 km from west to east and 5.4 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at SW of Lava Campground. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE30 July 2015
County listingModoc
Reported area in hectares1,968 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline9.1 × 5.4 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive31 July 2015
Frog Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 9.1 by 5.4 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 4,863 acres; the interagency feature stores 4,862.2 GIS acres. The mapped value is 0.8 acres below the reported value (0.02%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Meadow Fire of 2014 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (4,772 acres). Its mapped spans are 5.7 by 7.6 km, west–east then south–north, versus 9.1 by 5.4 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.