How long did the Argyll and Bute fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 18 April 2019 and 21 April 2019: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,418 hectares (14.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Argyll and Bute (1,409 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 16.9 °C, humidity dropped to 53 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very low.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United Kingdom (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

UK · United Kingdom · 2019-04-18 → 2019-04-21

Argyll and Bute fire, 18 April 2019 Argyll and Bute

Out · last detection 21 Apr 2019, 13:32 UTC

The fire started on 18 April 2019 in Argyll and Bute, United Kingdom, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,418 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Scotland since 2016 (of 49 with a page). Number 4 in United Kingdom in 2019, of 14.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Argyll and Bute · 2017 Argyll and Bute · 2025 Argyll and Bute · 2022 North Ayrshire · 2025

Burnt area: 1,418ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 4days; 18 Apr 2019 – 21 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 18 Apr; 2019
Heat detections: 30; in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start: 1; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 78MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Apr21 Apr

Play back 21 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

18 Apr 19 Apr 20 Apr 21 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

17°high

46km/h · peak gust

53%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.0 mm on 25 Apr.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 270 ha in 2017.

270 ha Argyll and Bute fire, March 2017 275 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Argyll and Bute where it started

1,409 ha reached on 18 Apr

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. 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.

What burned

Other natural land98 %
Broadleaved forest1.2 %
Coniferous forest0.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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)
18 Apr	15.9 °C	66 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 1
19 Apr	16.8 °C	53 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
20 Apr	16.9 °C	75 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
21 Apr	15.6 °C	65 %	44 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 2
22 Apr after	19.1 °C	40 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
23 Apr after	17.9 °C	60 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
24 Apr after	15.5 °C	61 %	71 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 7
25 Apr after	14.2 °C	53 %	62 km/h	8.0 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Apr 2019

After · 28 Apr 2019

Before After

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 21 April 2019 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1052 µg/m³

WHO 15

161718192021222324

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 · 30Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in United Kingdom ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Argyll and Bute fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 18 April 2019 and 21 April 2019: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,418 hectares (14.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Argyll and Bute (1,409 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 16.9 °C, humidity dropped to 53 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very low.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United Kingdom (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.

Emergency number: 999 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Forestry Commission ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 999 · 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 30 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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 (Open Government Licence v3.0). 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.

Where it burned