FIREWATCHER

Cove Creek Fire — Wheeler County, Oregon

Active fire · data from NIFC, refreshed 4 minutes ago · NIFC lists this incident as “0450 COVE CREEK” · 7 Miles NE from CLARNO, OR

The Cove Creek Fire is burning in Wheeler County, Oregon, 28 mi (45 km) NNW of Mitchell. NIFC's most recent report puts it at 7,208 acres and 100% contained. It was first reported on July 15, 2026, and the cause is recorded as natural.

Size
7,208 acres
Contained
100%
Discovered
July 15, 2026
Cause
Natural
Personnel assigned
41
Complexity
Type 3 Incident
Protecting agency
BLM
Fuel
Short Grass (1 foot)
Fire behaviour
Active

Show this fire on the live map

What the containment figure means

Crews have a control line all the way around this fire. That is not the same as the fire being out — a fire can be 100% contained and still burning inside that line for weeks. NIFC does not report a fire as out until the whole thing is cold.

How far it is from town

Straight-line distance and the direction you would look from each town to reach the fire's reported point of origin. A large fire is tens of miles across, so its nearest edge is closer than this — these are distances to the origin point NIFC publishes, not to the fire's edge.

TownDistanceDirectionCounty
Mitchell28 mi (45 km) NNWWheeler
Madras44 mi (71 km) ENEJefferson
Warm Springs47 mi (75 km) ENEJefferson
Prineville50 mi (81 km) NNECrook
Redmond62 mi (99 km) NEDeschutes

Mapped perimeter

No mapped perimeter has been published for this fire yet. Small fires frequently never get one — the acreage above is the agency's reported estimate, which is a number from the field rather than a measured polygon.

Satellite heat

No VIIRS thermal detections have landed inside this fire's footprint in the last 24 hours. That is normal for a fire that is mostly out, and also normal for one that is burning under a smoke layer or between satellite overpasses — the polar orbiters pass roughly four times a day. Source: NASA FIRMS VIIRS (NOAA-20, 375 m).

Fire weather and where the smoke is going

Read at Prineville Airport, 50 mi (81 km) from this fire — the one point FireWatcher polls the National Weather Service for. It is regional context, not this fire's own weather, and over that distance it can be wrong.

70°F, 28% relative humidity, wind 0 mph from the N gusting 12 mph.

The transport wind — the layer that actually carries a smoke column — is 7 mph out of the W, so smoke from fires in this area is being pushed toward the east, with a mixing height around 500 ft — the lower that number, the more smoke stays down where people breathe it.

Cameras near this fire

ODOT TripCheck road cameras

Live views are on the map. ALERTWest units are mountaintop pan-tilt-zoom cameras and they move, so "panned toward the fire" is where the camera was pointed at the last data refresh, not a promise of what is in frame. TripCheck cameras are fixed and look at the road, not at the fire.

Where to get official information

FireWatcher does not carry evacuation levels and is not an official source. Evacuation levels for this fire are issued by the Wheeler County Sheriff's Office, not by any of the feeds on this page. If you are deciding whether to leave, use these:

Other fires burning nearby

Where these numbers come from

Incident name, acreage, containment, cause, personnel and complexity are read straight from the National Interagency Fire Center's WFIGS interagency feed (CC-BY 3.0), which FireWatcher polls every five minutes; this page was built from the poll at Sep 11, 2026, 12:34 PM PDT (4 minutes ago). Perimeters come from the same source. Satellite heat is NASA FIRMS VIIRS. Weather is the National Weather Service. Aircraft positions are ADS-B via adsb.lol (ODbL 1.0). Camera positions are ALERTWest / University of Oregon and ODOT TripCheck. Distances are computed here from the published point of origin.

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