2026 wildfire Wheeler County, Oregon

Rosenbaum

Mapped the night it was reported, then scanned before dawn three mornings running, with the heat that sat beyond the daily fire perimeter on the map.

Nights of maps: 7; August 13 to August 22
Map sets delivered: 9; From two flying teams
Heat sources on the busiest map: 2,429; Whole fire, night of August 13
Acres on the incident record: 483; Read September 13, 2026

The delivered topographic map sheet for the Rosenbaum fire, the red daily fire perimeter on a ridge with pink heat sources strung along its edge and beyond it, a dashed cyan mop up buffer inside and a dashed green outside buffer beyond, the legend and title block at the left. — Hummingbird Drones' topographic sheet for the night of August 16, flown at 5:00 am on August 17: 428 isolated heat sources, many of them outside the daily fire perimeter from August 14 that the map carried, a 200 foot mop up buffer inside it, a 300 foot outside buffer beyond it, and the launch point. Open the PDF the incident received

Where it burned

Rosenbaum burned on the slopes of Rosenbaum Ridge, above Rosenbaum Canyon and beside Highway 19, the names printed on its own map sheets. The ridge is where the story of this fire sits: on the morning of August 17 a long string of heat ran along it, northwest of the daily fire perimeter the map carried.

Mapped the night it was reported

Rosenbaum was reported at about 7:30 in the evening on August 13 in Wheeler County, with a natural cause on the record. The Oregon Department of Forestry flew it that same night, at one in the morning, and its map drew the fire’s heat perimeter from the drone’s own reading, with the heat sources crowded along the edge.

Three mornings before dawn

From the next evening Hummingbird Drones flew it, mapping the perimeter first and then scanning the whole fire before dawn on three mornings in a row. The heat sources on those maps went from 428 to 226 to 181.

Their maps carried the incident’s daily fire perimeter in red, a mop up buffer inside it and an outside buffer 300 feet beyond it. On the first of those mornings many of the heat sources sat outside that perimeter, in the band an outside buffer marks for a crew to check for spot fires.

A last look

The Oregon Department of Forestry flew a last scan after that, and its map carried 48 heat sources.

What the Collaborative did

Two flying teams. 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.

54 files in the public archive Filed by night under the folder and file names the interagency share uses, free for anyone to open.
5 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.
23 min median, upload to approved maps Across 7 map sets with both times on the record, including the pilot’s own review before approving.
100 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.

Delivered to the incident

More thermal map sheets from Rosenbaum

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

A topographic map sheet of the Rosenbaum fire's first night, a pink heat perimeter drawn by the drone with dense pink heat sources along its edge, the Oregon Department of Forestry seal in the title block. — The Oregon Department of Forestry's first map, flown at 1:00 am on August 14 with a DJI Mavic 3T, less than six hours after the fire was reported: 2,429 isolated heat sources around a heat perimeter the drone drew itself, in pink. Open the PDF

The archive, night by night

Every map set

9 map sets over 7 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.

Hummingbird Drones
Oregon Department of Forestry

Night	Flown	Area	Heat sources	Mop up buffer	Archive
August 13	1:00 am	Whole fire	2,429	None	Open the night
August 14	8:30 pm	Perimeter scan	0	None	Open the night
August 15	9:10 pm	Perimeter scan	0	None	Open the night
	9:20 pm	Perimeter scan	0	None
	9:22 pm	Perimeter scan	0	None
August 16	5:00 am	Whole fire	428	200 ft	Open the night
August 17	5:30 am	Whole fire	226	100, 200, 300 ft	Open the night
August 18	4:30 am	Whole fire	181	400 ft	Open the night
August 22	7:58 am	Whole fire^*	48	None	Open the night

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

2 records on this fire are not counted because they were never approved for release.
* The pilot typed a different night for this flight. The heat detections’ own timestamps place it on the night shown, which is where the archive files it; the sheet itself keeps the typed date.

Where the images came from

Both sheets on this page are the PDFs delivered to the incident and published in the public archive, rendered as images. The name of the pilot printed in each title block is covered, because this site names organizations, not people.
The objectives quoted on this page are from the submission records.
The incident record is the interagency record in WFIGS, read September 13, 2026. It gives the report time in UTC; the page gives it in Pacific time.

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