As darkness fell over the Peak District one Wednesday night in June, calls began flooding into Derbyshire's fire service about smoke rising from the moorland above the town of Glossop.
More than a month later, that blaze on Tintwistle Moor has become a sprawling, smouldering wildfire the size of a small town — visible from space and still burning with no end in sight.
“Tintwistle Moor wildfire, burning since 24 June, has scorched 606 hectares and is visible from space.”
Declared a major incident on 13 July, the fire has burned through 606 hectares (1,630 acres), according to analysis by BBC Verify of data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis). That is the equivalent of 900 football pitches, and larger than the footprint of nearby Hadfield, home to about 6,700 people.
The fire erupted on 24 June and has been fuelled by a prolonged spell of hot, dry weather that shows little sign of easing, pushing the country's firefighting resources to their limits.
Dr Kirsten Lees, an environmental sciences lecturer specialising in zero carbon at the University of Derby, has been monitoring the wildfire using satellite imagery. She told the BBC the Tintwistle blaze is on a par with the biggest wildfires ever seen in England.
"It may well be, yes," she said when asked if it could be one of the largest in recent memory. "Honestly, it's upsetting and it's really scary."
Lees compared it to the Saddleworth fire in 2018 and the Fylingdales fire on the North York Moors last year. "This is comparable in scale to both of those," she said. "My estimate is that it is about the size of a small town. As this is not out yet, we don't know how much bigger it's going to get."
To overtake the Saddleworth fire in size, the Tintwistle blaze would need to grow by about 25%, while the Fylingdales fire was larger still.
A separate wildfire at Dovestone Reservoir, north of the Tintwistle blaze, covers about 90 hectares (220 acres).
Lees praised firefighters: "At the moment the fire services have been doing a fantastic job keeping it under control as much as possible. We probably won't see this being completely out until we get some good rain."
Clive Stanbrook, deputy chief fire officer for Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service, described the operation on Thursday as "complex and challenging", with the brigade and partner agencies continuing to battle the flames.
With no substantial rain forecast and the fire still active, the question now is how much larger — and longer — this unprecedented moorland inferno will grow.