Satellites first detected fire on 8 October 2026 in Al-Zubair, Iraq. It was active for 11 days, with 536 heat detections and an area with fire of about 1,694 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
Estimated from hotspots: no perimeter has been published yet.
This is an estimate from the VIIRS pixels that saw fire. It will change when the perimeter is published.
8 Oct 2026 to 18 Oct 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 63 MW.
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
Total radiative power on 14 October 2026; hotspots that day: 76.
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
High of 42.3 °C and minimum humidity of 11% on 8 October 2026; gusts of 48 km/h on 9 October 2026.
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-08 | 59 | 587 | 42.3 | 26.6 | 11 | 13 | 24.8 | 0 | 55.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-09 | 26 | 149 | 41.2 | 28.2 | 13 | 29.5 | 47.9 | 0 | 80.9 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-10 | 40 | 439 | 40.5 | 27.9 | 14 | 22.1 | 38.5 | 0 | 69.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-11 | 29 | 307 | 39.6 | 27.9 | 16 | 21.7 | 36.7 | 0 | 67.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-12 | 10 | 67 | 40.7 | 26.6 | 14 | 18 | 30.6 | 0 | 62.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-13 | 29 | 214 | 40.8 | 27 | 12 | 11.5 | 25.2 | 0 | 53.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-14 | 76 | 719 | 41 | 26.1 | 12 | 10.5 | 15.8 | 0 | 52.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-15 | 36 | 199 | 40.6 | 25.8 | 12 | 9.4 | 19.4 | 0 | 51.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-16 | 28 | 228 | 39.9 | 25.6 | 12 | 13 | 25.6 | 0 | 56.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-17 | 29 | 211 | 38 | 24.2 | 18 | 9.3 | 22.3 | 0 | 48.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-18 | 36 | 350 | 39.4 | 26.2 | 15 | 11.1 | 20.5 | 0 | 50.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-19 | 55 | 381 | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
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.
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)
Started with Very dry air: 69 % of the area in Iraq 60 days without rain: 27 % of the area in Iraq
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Oct | 42.3 °C | 11 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 9 Oct | 41.2 °C | 13 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
| 10 Oct | 40.5 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 11 Oct | 39.6 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 12 Oct | 40.7 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 13 Oct | 40.8 °C | 12 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 14 Oct | 41.0 °C | 12 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 15 Oct | 40.6 °C | 12 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 16 Oct | 39.9 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 17 Oct | 38.0 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Oct | 39.4 °C | 15 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
On 17 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 74 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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)
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
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
No changes since 24 October 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 ADM2 (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 from each country’s official figure.