CM Thermal and Fire LLC

10/09/2026

09/15/2026

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Near Amidon in Slope County, North Dakota, the gravel on the county roads is red because it was baked.

Under these badlands sit shallow seams of lignite, a soft low-grade coal close enough to the surface that lightning, prairie fire, or simple spontaneous combustion can set it burning. Once a seam catches, it can smolder underground for centuries, following the coal wherever it runs.

Lewis and Clark noticed it. Their journals from the Missouri country describe hillsides that smoked and ground that was hot, and they were not the first to see it. The Burning Coal Vein south of Amidon was documented as actively burning into the twentieth century, and reporting indicates the vein itself finally went out in the late 1970s.

What it left behind is written across the whole region. When a seam burns, it bakes the clay and sandstone above it into a hard red rock the locals call scoria, or clinker. That is the red gravel on the roads. That is the red banding in the buttes. Whole ridgelines in western North Dakota are the fired ceiling of a fire that finished before anyone was born.

Columnar junipers grow in the burned ground there and almost nowhere else in the state.

Have you driven a scoria road in western North Dakota after rain?

09/06/2026

This is the burning coal seam started by the Short Draw Fire that caused the 3bar Corral Fire. We flew this area in the spring after the Short Draw Fire and missed this one. It could have just been very small as it still isnt very big several years later but I think we probably saw heat and when we switched to the RGB camera and saw the sandstone rocks , probably concluded the heat was from rocks reflecting light or had been heated by the sun. We could smell it while searching for the fire ignition source and knew the general area it was in but it still took a couple hours searching to find it. I should start packing my drone to fires again.

08/04/2026

05/28/2026

The winds have been stirring up numerous bcs

05/26/2026

05/21/2026

5-19-26. Sunday we had a 10 acre fire, took yesterday off and tackled another 30 acre coal seam fire this afternoon along with the USWFS on 3 Bar Creek. Its shaping up to be a long year with all the fires we've already had. The South end of the county is very dry and with all the wind we've had, wildfires are already covering country quicker than normal for this time of year. The forward progress is stopped on this East River Fire and the USWFS is spending the night on it and will have it contained tomorrow.

05/16/2026

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