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SY · Syria · –

Ain al Arab fire, October 2026 Ain al Arab, Tell Abiad, Sarin

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2026, 10:49 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 2 October 2026 in Ain al Arab, Syria. It was active for 10 days, with 11 heat detections and an area with fire of about 154 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.

The power measured by the satellite is low (8.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Area with fire
≈ 154ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
2 Oct 2026 – 11 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
2 Oct
2026
Heat detections
11
in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
10MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct11 Oct
11 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 4 Oct 2026 · 8 MW · 2 6 Oct 2026 · 9 MW · 2 7 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 8 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1 9 Oct 2026 · 14 MW · 2 10 Oct 2026 · 15 MW · 4 11 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0
2 Oct 6 Oct 8 Oct 10 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

28°high
46km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. Ain al Arab where it started
    84 ha reached on 2 Oct
    0.1 %
  2. 42 ha reached on 4 Oct
    0.1 %
  3. 28 ha reached on 6 Oct
    0.0 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
30 Sept 28.1 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm High 29
1 Oct 26.8 °C 45 % 29 km/h 2.5 mm Low 8
2 Oct 27.1 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 19
3 Oct 25.5 °C 48 % 26 km/h 1.4 mm Low 10
4 Oct 28.5 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
5 Oct 27.5 °C 37 % 37 km/h 3.2 mm Moderate 13
6 Oct 25.4 °C 46 % 46 km/h 0.7 mm High 22
7 Oct 25.4 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
8 Oct 27.5 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Oct 27.7 °C 34 % 41 km/h 1.1 mm High 28
10 Oct 29.4 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 29.1, a minimum humidity of 38% and 56 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 8.

FWI at the start 29.1
Minimum humidity 38 %
Days without rain 56
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Madiq Castle fire, July 2026
165 ha 1 day FWI 34.8 Min. humidity 38 % 233 km away, in 2026

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
46km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 11 Oct, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 25 Sept 2026
After · 18 Oct 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 5 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1049 µg/m³
Optical depth1.61
29 Sept2 Oct5 Oct8 Oct
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 11Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Syria

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ain al Arab fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 2 October 2026 to 11 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 154 hectares with fire (1.5 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ain al Arab (84 ha, 0.1 %); Tell Abiad (42 ha, 0.1 %); Sarin (28 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Syria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 154 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 11 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.