Boli County fire, 21 October 2025 勃利县 · Boli County, Huanan County
The fire started on 21 October 2025 in Boli County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 48,574 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1765 with a page). The largest in China in 2025, of 715.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 48,574ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 21 Oct 2025 – 6 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 21 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 1,341
- in a single hotspot: 106 MW
- Danger at start
- 14
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 866MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 16 Nov.
This area had burned before
77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,150 ha in 2016, 18,612 ha in 2017, 21 ha in 2018, 8,141 ha in 2019, 3,103 ha in 2020, 13,030 ha in 2021, 75 ha in 2022, 11,283 ha in 2023, 9,337 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 37,183 ha that had burned before.
- 5,157 ha Boli County fire, October 2017 13,911 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,783 ha Boli County fire, March 2023 5,310 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,394 ha Boli County fire, October 2017 4,212 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,803 ha Boli County fire, October 2016 4,319 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,503 ha Boli County fire, March 2023 3,121 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,801 ha Boli County fire, October 2021 3,402 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,657 ha Boli County fire, October 2016 1,860 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,533 ha Boli County fire, October 2017 1,728 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
45,780 ha10 %
-
Huanan County 桦南县2,726 ha0.6 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Oct | 6.2 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 22 Oct | 6.6 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 23 Oct | 5.3 °C | 36 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 24 Oct | 6.4 °C | 27 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 25 Oct | 10.1 °C | 19 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 26 Oct | 7.2 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 27 Oct | 2.6 °C | 37 % | 52 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 28 Oct | 2.4 °C | 43 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 29 Oct | 7.6 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 14.6 mm | Very low 0 |
| 30 Oct | 7.3 °C | 38 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 31 Oct | 10.5 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 1 Nov | 7.9 °C | 31 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 2 Nov | 2.5 °C | 49 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 7 |
| 3 Nov | 5.9 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 4 Nov | 9.4 °C | 43 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 5 Nov | 10.4 °C | 24 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 6 Nov | 8.0 °C | 36 % | 54 km/h | 3.5 mm | Very low 2 |
| 7 Nov after | 0.9 °C | 31 % | 43 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very low 3 |
| 8 Nov after | 2.4 °C | 38 % | 38 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very low 2 |
| 9 Nov after | 5.6 °C | 36 % | 41 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 5 |
| 10 Nov after | -1.6 °C | 41 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 11 Nov after | 2.3 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 12 Nov after | 8.1 °C | 31 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 13 Nov after | 2.6 °C | 31 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 14 Nov after | 1.7 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 15 Nov after | 4.2 °C | 22 % | 28 km/h | 0.7 mm | Low 7 |
| 16 Nov after | 2.5 °C | 41 % | 43 km/h | 1.3 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 6 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.1 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)
Detections table · 1,341Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,310 haBoli County 勃利县30 March 2023 · 4 days · 9 km away
- 4,319 haBoli County 勃利县25 October 2016 · 8 days · 10 km away
- 13,911 haBoli County 勃利县22 October 2017 · 11 days · 18 km away
- 4,516 haBoli County 勃利县25 October 2025 · 2 days · 22 km away
- 4,391 haHuanan County 桦南县23 March 2026 · 6 days · 23 km away
- 5,052 haHuanan County 桦南县20 April 2021 · 3 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Boli County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 October 2025 and 6 November 2025: 17 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 48,574 hectares (485.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Boli County (45,780 ha, 10 %); Huanan County (2,726 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 10.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
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.
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 7 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,341 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.
Where this data comes from
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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.