A new wildfire started at about 4:30 p.m. on Friday near the Farmington Bay area, measuring at an estimated 300 acres by 5:30 p.m, but rain from a large thunderstorm significantly decreased fire behavior Friday night.
The Legacy Fire is located in Davis County and was caused by lightning. It grew from 200 acres to 300 acres in an hour on Friday due to inaccessible terrain, according to Utah Fire Info, and crews monitored the blaze overnight.
An update from Utah Fire Info on Saturday stated interior smoke will be visible today from the wildfire, but with cooler weather and increased humidity, “no additional growth is expected.” A drone flight to map the fire is anticipated this afternoon.
At about 7:05 p.m. on Friday, Rocky Mountain Power announced in a tweet that over 8,000 customers in the area were experiencing an outage due to the fire, and the estimated time of restoration was 10 p.m. A Facebook post from the Kaysville Fire Department stated some evacuations took place close to the fire, but an official with the Davis County Sheriff’s office said Friday that houses in Farmington had started evacuations but are no longer being evacuated.
“Honestly, until they get a really good assessment — if they could do like their recon flight tonight, or some sort of, you know, walk around — I don’t think they’re gonna have a very good estimate other than just based off the size of the smoke and the flame,” said Kayli Yardley with the Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands on Friday. “I think it’s still sitting probably pretty close to that, if not, you know, closer to 400 now.”
Yardley said there were several forest service, county and state engines responding to the blaze on Friday afternoon, and structure protection was implemented as visibility in the area was “basically zero.”
“There’s a thunder cell moving into the area that’s moved over the fire,” Yardley said Friday. “They’re getting 50-mph outflow winds right now pushing the fire northeast towards the subdivision.”