Started on Aug 23, 2026.
United States todayLive
True view
Fire view
Fire view (right): infrared (SWIR), sees through smoke and brings out the heat.
🟢 green = vegetation
🟤 brown = already burned
🟠 orange = fire right now
Drag to compare: normal photo on the left, heat brought out on the right.
Green: vegetationBrown: already burnedOrange: fire right nowSentinel-2 · Copernicus
Red dots: heat detected by satellite in the last 48h. NASA FIRMS
Quick facts
- Location
- 5 miles southwest of Elberta, UT
- Cause
- Natural
- People working on it
- 56 people
- Complexity
- Type 4 IncidentOfficial scale from 5 to 1: a Type 1 is the most complex in the country.
- What's burning
- Chaparral (6 feet)
- How it's behaving
- ActiveWind Driven Runs — The wind pushes it in long runs in one direction.
- Jurisdiction
- BLM · Federal land
Glossary: what each term means
Barely moving. Low, thin smoke.
Burning without flame, in the ground or in roots. Can flare up days later.
Moves slowly, hugging the ground.
Spreads with low, steady flames.
Spreading evenly and steadily, with visible flame.
Fast and unpredictable.
Runs along the ground much faster than a person walks.
Grows along the sides, not head-on.
Moves against the wind or downhill, which makes it slower.
Climbs into the treetops and jumps crown to crown. It can't be attacked from the ground.
Climbs into the crowns in bursts and drops back down.
Whole trees flaring up like torches.
Single scattered trees flaring up whole, like torches.
Whole clumps of trees flaring at once.
Wind carries embers through the air and starts new fires ahead of the front: that is how a fire jumps a road or a firebreak.
The wind pushes it in long runs in one direction.
The ones marked ● are the behaviors that make a fire harder to stop. They are not a warning or an instruction: they are the description written by the agency in charge. For decisions, always follow your emergency services.
Driven by wind and fueled by six-foot chaparral, the active Big Mountain Fire is burning five miles southwest of Elberta, Utah, in Utah County. Currently uncontained at 400 acres, the Type 4 incident is being managed by a Type 4 Incident Commander and 56 personnel from the Bureau of Land Management, with operations totaling $150,000 in costs on federal land.
Satellites have detected four heat signatures near the fire perimeter over a 48-hour window, capturing the extent of the active, wind-driven runs. The blaze, which was ignited by natural causes on August 23, 2026, burns within a regional fire season that typically spans from June to October.
This incident unfolds during a broader national fire year in which 2,993,191 hectares have burned so far in 2026, tracking 45% below the two-decade average.
In context
This wildfire burned in Utah for 2 days. In total it burned about 400 acres — around 1.6 km².
In the Northern Hemisphere, wildfire activity usually peaks during the warm, dry months — roughly May through October.
The bigger picture in United States
Across United States, roughly 3,343,020 hectares have burned so far in 2026 — 39% below the two-decade average. Data from Copernicus GWIS.
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Community reports
Reports from people near the fire · unverified
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Not official emergency information. In an emergency, contact fire services/authorities.
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