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2026 wildfire Jackson County, Oregon

Fielder Mountain

Night after night over the same steep ground, and what happened to the heat inside a perimeter that never moved.

Nights of maps
11
August 15 to August 26
Map sets delivered
13
Flown by Rogue Reconnaissance, the founder's company
Heat sources on the busiest map
2,852
Perimeter scan, night of August 15
Acres on the incident record
573
Read September 13, 2026
The delivered aerial map sheet for the first night on Fielder Mountain, thousands of heat sources in yellow, orange and purple filling a pink heat perimeter on a steep slope above a highway and river, the legend and title block at the left.
The aerial sheet from the first night, flown at 11:42 pm on August 15: 2,852 heat sources graded high, medium and low inside a 574 acre heat perimeter, the launch point, and a 50 foot mop up buffer. Open the PDF the incident received

The same ground, every night but one

Fielder Mountain was reported on August 13 on steep ground in Jackson County. Rogue Reconnaissance, the founder’s company, flew it every night but one from August 15 to August 26, and the heat perimeter on the maps stayed at about 575 acres the whole time. The fire was not getting bigger.

What changed was the heat inside it. The first map carried 2,852 heat sources. The last carried 58. Every one of those sheets is further down this page, night by night.

Crews said they were finding more

On the night of August 19, the team and a division reported that crews on the ground were finding more hot spots than the maps showed. That night the pilot lowered the detection threshold, raised the sensitivity, and marked the lower confidence signatures as possible heat. Possible heat on the maps went from none on the first night to more than a hundred on the nights of August 19 and 21.

While the thermal mosaic stitched, the pilot walked out to check. Two of the signatures that night were a parked excavator’s engine and a pile of rocks still holding the day’s warmth. Neither was fire. The night before, the map’s high heat had led to a madrone still burning at its base. That is the whole case for possible heat: it tells a crew where to look, not what it will find.

On the night of August 21 the map showed a few suspicious signatures inside the mop up buffer near a home and close to the line, and the pilot reported them to the incident commander that night.

Sharing the sky

On the night of August 18, an Oregon Department of Forestry helicopter was training on night vision over the fire. The drone stood down while the helicopter was inside the temporary flight restriction and went back to work once it left, and the three map sets that night were flown around it.

Later in the assignment the flights started from the bottom of the fire and followed the terrain, for more detailed mosaics on the steep ground, and waited until later in the night, when cooler ground lets faint heat stand out.

On the ground

The fire, up close

The charred base of a madrone at night, glowing red where it meets the ash.
A madrone still burning at its base, early on August 19. The map graded it high heat, and the pilot walked to it.
A small red glow in a dark burned clearing at the edge of standing trees.
Heat glowing at the edge of the timber, found from the map the same morning.
The rear of a parked yellow excavator at night.
A parked excavator's engine, marked as possible heat on the night of August 19. Not fire.
A pile of grey rocks lit by a headlamp at night.
Rocks still holding the day's warmth, the same night. Also not fire.
A hollow, burned out oak trunk at night with fallen branches across it.
A burned out oak with intense heat inside it, the night of August 21.

What the Collaborative did

One flying team. The system did the rest.

Every map set on this fire came back as two thermal map sheets, one on aerial imagery and one on a topographic base, with a daily log, a Google Earth file and the GIS layers, on the flying organization’s own template.

  • 78 files in the public archive Filed by night under the folder and file names the interagency share uses, free for anyone to open.
  • 9 map sets carry the daily fire perimeter The incident’s own interagency perimeter, pulled onto the map in red beside the drone’s pink heat.
  • 45 min median, upload to approved maps Across 13 map sets with both times on the record, including the pilot’s own review before approving.
  • 50 to 400 ft mop up buffers drawn Dashed lines a set distance in from the perimeter, measured along the ground, so a crew can see which heat sits close to the edge.

How a map is made

The first night on Fielder Mountain, layer by layer

The whole fire at 11:42 pm on August 15. First the stitched thermal mosaic from that flight, then each layer the delivered map set draws on top of it.

A thermal mosaic of Fielder Mountain on its first night, a steep slope in shades of grey with thousands of small white hot spots, clipped to the outline of the fire on a dark background.
Fielder Mountain, the night of August 15: the thermal mosaic, clipped to the fire, and the delivered layers of that map set. Every heat source on the map is drawn; none is moved or left out.
  1. The thermal mosaic Hundreds of thermal frames from one night's flight, stitched into one thermal image of the ground. The whiter the ground, the warmer it reads.
  2. IR heat perimeter The outer edge of the heat, as the pilot mapped it, drawn in pink because a drone flew it.
  3. 2,852 isolated heat sources Each single heat source, graded high, medium or low against the rest of the flight, in yellow, orange and purple. Each is a place a crew can walk to.
  4. Mop up buffer A dashed line a set distance in from the heat perimeter, so a crew can see which heat sits close to the edge.
  5. Launch and recovery Where the crew launched and landed the aircraft.

  6. Pink is a drone. Red came from elsewhere: a crewed aircraft's map or the incident's daily fire perimeter. Every map the Collaborative makes follows that rule, so anyone on the fire can see at a glance what the drone found.

    How to read the map

Delivered to the incident

More thermal map sheets from Fielder Mountain

Pink is a drone Red came from elsewhere How to read the map

The same first night map set on a topographic base, the heat sources spread across the contours of the slope.
The same night on the topographic base, where the heat reads against the contours of the slope. Open the PDF

Night by night

One sheet a night

The map from every aerial sheet delivered on Fielder Mountain, one per night, with the number of heat sources it carried. On August 18 it is the whole fire sheet of the three delivered that night. Each opens as the PDF the incident received.

  1. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 15, 2,852 heat sources. August 152,852 heat sources
  2. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 16, 1,054 heat sources. August 161,054 heat sources
  3. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 17, 783 heat sources. August 17783 heat sources
  4. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 18, 465 heat sources. August 18465 heat sources
  5. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 19, 436 heat sources. August 19436 heat sources
  6. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 21, 400 heat sources. August 21400 heat sources
  7. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 22, 216 heat sources. August 22216 heat sources
  8. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 23, 150 heat sources. August 23150 heat sources
  9. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 24, 155 heat sources. August 24155 heat sources
  10. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 25, 119 heat sources. August 25119 heat sources
  11. Fielder Mountain fire, the aerial thermal map sheet delivered for the night of August 26, 58 heat sources. August 2658 heat sources

The archive, night by night

Every map set

13 map sets over 11 nights

One row per map set, grouped by night. A flight after midnight counts with the night before it, and the archive files each night under the next day's date, the operational period its maps served. Where two flights covered the same ground in one night, a heat source can appear on both maps, so the nightly numbers are not added into a trend.

Night Flown Area Heat sources Possible heat Mop up buffer
August 15 11:42 pm Perimeter scan 2,852 0 50 ft Open the night
August 16 2:22 am Perimeter scan 1,054 24 100 ft Open the night
August 17 12:03 am Perimeter scan 783 39 50, 100 ft Open the night
August 18 12:38 am Whole fire 465 57 100, 200, 300 ft Open the night
12:56 am Division G and L 253 23 100, 200, 300 ft
1:04 am Division C and W 238 34 100, 200, 300 ft
August 19 3:18 am Perimeter scan 436 101 200, 300 ft Open the night
August 21 2:31 am Perimeter scan 400 106 300, 400 ft Open the night
August 22 1:38 am Perimeter scan 216 20 300, 400 ft Open the night
August 23 3:35 am Perimeter scan 150 11 300, 400 ft Open the night
August 24 1:35 am Perimeter scan 155 11 400 ft Open the night
August 25 4:31 am Perimeter scan 119 3 400 ft Open the night
August 26 1:38 am Perimeter scan 58 6 400 ft Open the night

Counted September 13, 2026 from the submission records and the public archive.

Where the images came from
  • Every sheet on this page is the PDF delivered to the incident and published in the public archive, rendered as an image without changes. Each links to its PDF.
  • Photographs by Rogue Reconnaissance, the founder's company, dated from each photo's own record. The contractor's name on the excavator is blurred.

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