The archived outline of the Whaleback Fire spans about 11.0 km from west to east and 11.6 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at off Whaleback Mountain and Antelope Valley Road, West of Spaulding. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 27 July 2018 |
|---|---|
| County listing | Lassen |
| Reported area in hectares | 7,569 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 11.0 × 11.6 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 4 January 2019 |
| Perimeter collection method as recorded | GPS – Uncorrected Data |
What the perimeter shows
The two spans differ by only 0.6 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 18,703 acres; the interagency feature stores 18,748.6 GIS acres. The mapped value is 45.6 acres above the reported value (0.24%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Lion Fire of 2017 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (18,900 acres). Its mapped spans are 12.5 by 15.0 km, west–east then south–north, versus 11.0 by 11.6 km here. The broad proportions are comparable. That does not establish that fuel, wind or suppression tactics were similar.
Sources and map method
- Whaleback Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Lion 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.