Meadow Fire (2016): mapping the 4,347-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Meadow Fire spans about 6.5 km from west to east and 5.5 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at East of Trail of 100 Giants between Lloyd Meadow Road and Western Divide Highway. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE29 October 2016
County listingTulare
Reported area in hectares1,759 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline6.5 × 5.5 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive19 December 2016
Meadow Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 6.5 by 5.5 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 1.0 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 4,347 acres; the interagency feature stores 4,346.3 GIS acres. The mapped value is 0.7 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 Grand Fire of 2013 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (4,346 acres). Its mapped spans are 4.9 by 6.5 km, west–east then south–north, versus 6.5 by 5.5 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.