Cephalonia fire, 8 August 2025 Ληξουρίου · Cephalonia
The fire started on 8 August 2025 in Cephalonia, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 105 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 20th largest in Ionian Islands since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 41 in Greece in 2025, of 43.
The power measured by the satellite is low (17.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 105ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 8 Aug 2025 – 8 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 2
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 17
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 28MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
8 Aug 2025 · 28 MW · 2
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 76 ha in 2017, 25 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 76 ha that had burned before.
What happened to each town
-
105 ha reached on 8 Aug0.1 %
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
- Sclerophyllous scrub69 %
- Agricultural areas31 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Aug | 25.5 °C | 69 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 9 Aug after | 25.7 °C | 66 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 10 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 58 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 11 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 55 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 12 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 58 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 13 Aug after | 26.9 °C | 60 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 14 Aug after | 26.6 °C | 61 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 15 Aug after | 26.0 °C | 64 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 16 Aug after | 26.1 °C | 57 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 17 Aug after | 25.0 °C | 71 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 18 Aug after | 24.8 °C | 76 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
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 7 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 2Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 680 haCephalonia ΛηξουρίουJuly 2021 · 2 days · 15 km away
- 383 haCephalonia ΛηξουρίουAugust 2026 · 1 day · 16 km away
- 270 haCephalonia ΛηξουρίουSeptember 2018 · 1 day · 17 km away
- 344 haCephalonia Ληξουρίου13 August 2025 · 1 day · 24 km away
- 176 haZakynthos ΖάκυνθοςOctober 2020 · 2 days · 29 km away
- 1,592 haZakynthos Ζάκυνθος26 August 2017 · 3 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cephalonia fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2025 and 8 August 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 105 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cephalonia (105 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.5 °C, humidity dropped to 69 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Greece (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: 112 · 199 · 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: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2 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 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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.