Drohobych fire, 12 March 2026 Дрогобицький район · Drohobych
The fire started on 12 March 2026 in Drohobych, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 347 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 17th largest in Lviv Oblast since 2016 (of 106 with a page). Number 234 in Ukraine in 2026, of 985.
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- Burnt area
- 347ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 6days
- 12 Mar 2026 – 17 Mar 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 12 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 4
- in a single hotspot: 54 MW
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 33MW
- 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 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 197 ha in 2021, 41 ha in 2022, 224 ha in 2024, 144 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 328 ha that had burned before.
- 224 ha Drohobych fire, February 2024 394 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 197 ha Drohobych fire, October 2021 254 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 115 ha Drohobych fire, January 2025 1,006 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 28 ha Drohobych fire, March 2022 318 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
348 ha reached on 16 Mar0.2 %
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
- Other natural land45 %
- Mixed forest33 %
- Agricultural areas19 %
- Broadleaved forest2.9 %
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 | 18.1 °C | 30 % | 24 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 8 |
| 13 Mar | 18.0 °C | 35 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 14 Mar | 17.4 °C | 28 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 15 Mar | 14.1 °C | 36 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 16 Mar | 16.7 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 17 Mar | 12.6 °C | 46 % | 20 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 8 |
| 18 Mar after | 12.2 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 19 Mar after | 9.3 °C | 53 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 6 |
| 20 Mar after | 11.5 °C | 39 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 21 Mar after | 10.3 °C | 48 % | 29 km/h | 0.9 mm | Very low 4 |
| 22 Mar after | 13.0 °C | 33 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
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 13 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 22 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 · 4Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,006 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район28 January 2025 · 6 days · 1 km away
- 452 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район20 October 2021 · 6 days · 3 km away
- 530 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район22 February 2025 · 4 days · 5 km away
- 698 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район28 January 2025 · 3 days · 7 km away
- 1,146 haSambir Самбірський районMarch 2020 · 11 days · 10 km away
- 865 haSambir Самбірський район14 March 2026 · 5 days · 10 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Drohobych fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (12 March 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 17 March 2026 (6 days from 12 March 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 347 hectares (3.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Drohobych (348 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Drohobych and came within 23.0 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 18.1 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class 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 · 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.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 4 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 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.