Jerusalem Fire (2015): mapping the 25,118-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Jerusalem Fire spans about 14.0 km from west to east and 13.1 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Jerusalem Valley area, northeast of Middletown. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE9 August 2015
County listingLake, Napa
Reported area in hectares10,165 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline14.0 × 13.1 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive25 August 2015
Perimeter collection method as recordedMixed Methods
Jerusalem Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 14.0 by 13.1 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 0.8 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 25,118 acres; the interagency feature stores 25,118.3 GIS acres. The mapped value is 0.3 acres above the reported value (0.00%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

CAL FIRE also records structures threatened: 0; structures destroyed: 27. 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 Springs Fire of 2013 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (24,251 acres). Its mapped spans are 15.4 by 15.4 km, west–east then south–north, versus 14.0 by 13.1 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.