Changling County fire, October 2026 长岭县 · Changling County
The fire started on 27 October 2026 in Changling County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,048 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 762th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 807 with a page). Number 934 in China in 2026, of 999.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,048ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 27 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 27 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 24
- in a single hotspot: 122 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 837MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
27 Oct 2026 · 837 MW · 24
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 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 214 ha in 2022, 349 ha in 2024, 387 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 462 ha that had burned before.
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
-
1,044 ha reached on 27 Oct0.2 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 20 hectares of built-up land and about 1,500 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Oct | 6.2 °C | 21 % | 71 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Oct after | 8.9 °C | 30 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 29 Oct after | 11.0 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 30 Oct after | 8.4 °C | 25 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
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 25 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 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 · 24Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,095 haNong'an County 农安县16 November 2025 · 7 days · 23 km away
- 4,714 haGongzhuling City 公主岭市12 November 2025 · 11 days · 23 km away
- 3,062 haChangling County 长岭县15 March 2026 · 10 days · 24 km away
- 7,412 haGongzhuling City 公主岭市28 October 2025 · 11 days · 28 km away
- 2,441 haGongzhuling City 公主岭市20 November 2024 · 1 day · 29 km away
- 2,964 haChangling County 长岭县17 March 2026 · 9 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Changling County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 October 2026 and 27 October 2026: 1 day 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 1,048 hectares (10.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Changling County (1,044 ha, 0.2 %).
- Is the Changling County fire still active?
- No fire detections since 27 Oct 2026, 05:27 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 6.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 28 October 2026.
- Page published (1,048 ha).
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 24 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.