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 FIRE | 16 August 2016 |
|---|---|
| County listing | Kern |
| Reported area in hectares | 11,866 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 18.4 × 15.6 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 1 October 2016 |
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
- Cedar Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Alamo 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.