Started on Jun 22, 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 east of Beaver, UT
- People working on it
- 33 people
- Complexity
- Type 4 IncidentOfficial scale from 5 to 1: a Type 1 is the most complex in the country.
- What's burning
- Timber (Litter and Understory)
- How it's behaving
- MinimalSmoldering — Burning without flame, in the ground or in roots. Can flare up days later.Isolated Torching — Single scattered trees flaring up whole, like torches.
- Jurisdiction
- USFS · 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.
Burning across 97,464 acres of federal timber, litter, and understory five miles east of Beaver, Utah, in Beaver County, the Cottonwood Fire has maintained a steady trajectory over seventy days of activity, averaging an estimated 1,392 acres per day since it started on June 22, 2026. Managing this Type 4 incident within the region's typical June to October fire season, thirty-three personnel under a Type 4 IC have successfully brought the USFS-managed fire to 100 percent containment, with current fire behavior now characterized as minimal, smoldering, and showing only isolated torching.
The broader national landscape highlights a contrasting picture for the year, with 3,150,304 hectares burned so far in 2026, marking a total that sits 43 percent below the country's two-decade average. Despite this broader downward trend in national acreage, suppression efforts on the Cottonwood incident accumulated a total cost of $62,771,500 before crews achieved full containment.
In context
This wildfire burned in Utah for 73 days. In total it burned about 97,464 acres — around 394 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 3,362,441 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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