Cedar Fire (2016): mapping the 29,322-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Cedar Fire spans about 18.4 km from west to east and 15.6 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at off of Hwy 155 in the Greenhorn Mountains, west of Wofford Heights. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE16 August 2016
County listingKern
Reported area in hectares11,866 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline18.4 × 15.6 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive1 October 2016
Cedar Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 18.4 by 15.6 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 2.8 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 29,322 acres; the interagency feature stores 29,100.6 GIS acres. The mapped value is 221.4 acres below the reported value (0.76%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Alamo Fire of 2017 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (28,687 acres). Its mapped spans are 14.1 by 15.2 km, west–east then south–north, versus 18.4 by 15.6 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.