Skip to content
worldfires
UA · Ukraine · →

Borova fire, 9 July 2025 Борівський район · Borova

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2025, 09:51 UTC

The fire started on 9 July 2025 in Borova, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 373 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 84th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 287 in Ukraine in 2025, of 1359.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
373ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
9 Jul 2025 – 11 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
9 Jul
2025
Heat detections
26
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
119MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Jul 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jul11 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

91011

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
51km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.7 mm on 19 Jul.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Borova Борівський район 12.7 km from the town where it started
    373 ha reached on 9 Jul
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land58 %
  • Mixed forest33 %
  • Agricultural areas8.5 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
9 Jul 37.1 °C 8 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Jul 38.5 °C 6 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Jul 38.0 °C 16 % 51 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 54
12 Jul after 37.9 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Jul after 36.2 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
14 Jul after 32.4 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
15 Jul after 32.9 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jul after 32.3 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
17 Jul after 32.1 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
18 Jul after 32.9 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.8 mm High 22
19 Jul after 29.8 °C 54 % 36 km/h 10.7 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jul 2025
After · 18 Jul 2025

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 12 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1073 µg/m³
Optical depth0.46
7891011121314
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 · 26Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Borova fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 9 July 2025 and 11 July 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 373 hectares (3.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Borova (373 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 12.7 km of Borova. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 112

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 101 · 112.

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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.