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Chernihiv fire, 12 March 2026 Чернігів · Chernihiv

Out · last measured on 12 Mar 2026

The fire started on 12 March 2026 in Chernihiv, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 249 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 70th largest in Chernihiv Oblast since 2016 (of 156 with a page). Number 357 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

Burnt area
249ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
12 Mar 2026 – 12 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
12 Mar
2026
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 5 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Mar12 Mar

The weather it burned in

15°high
30km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 130 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Chernihiv Чернігів 286,899 inhabitants · 41.7 km from the town where it started
    248 ha reached on 14 Mar
    0.1 %

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 land97 %
  • Mixed forest2.8 %

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)
12 Mar 14.6 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
13 Mar after 16.3 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
14 Mar after 11.7 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
15 Mar after 12.4 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
16 Mar after 11.1 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
17 Mar after 8.6 °C 53 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
18 Mar after 5.8 °C 75 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 2
19 Mar after 9.7 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
20 Mar after 11.5 °C 40 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
21 Mar after 10.5 °C 49 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
22 Mar after 12.3 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Mar 2026
After · 19 Mar 2026

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 13 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.16
101112131415
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 · 1Every 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 Chernihiv fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 March 2026 and 12 March 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 249 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chernihiv (248 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 41.7 km of Chernihiv. 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 14.6 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, class Very low.
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
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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 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.