Clayton Fire (2016): mapping the 3,929-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Clayton Fire spans about 5.1 km from west to east and 6.7 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at off Hwy 29 and Clayton Creek south of Lower Lake. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE13 August 2016
County listingLake
Reported area in hectares1,590 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline5.1 × 6.7 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive26 August 2016
Clayton Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 5.1 by 6.7 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 1.7 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 3,929 acres; the interagency feature stores 3,928.0 GIS acres. The mapped value is 1.0 acres below the reported value (0.02%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

CAL FIRE also records structures damaged: 28; structures destroyed: 300. Those counts come from the incident record. A building inside the perimeter cannot be assigned a damage category from this map alone.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Sun Fire of 2018 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (3,889 acres). Its mapped spans are 4.6 by 6.8 km, west–east then south–north, versus 5.1 by 6.7 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.