Elan Valley fire, April 2026 Powys, Ceredigion
The fire started on 27 April 2026 in Powys, United Kingdom, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,480 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Wales since 2016 (of 25 with a page). Number 3 in United Kingdom in 2026, of 21.
The power measured by the satellite is low (7.6 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
- 1,480ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 1day
- 27 Apr 2026 – 27 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Apr
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1
- in a single hotspot: 8 MW
- Danger at start
- 7
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 8MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
27 Apr 2026 · 8 MW · 1
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. Rain came after the fire: 4.8 mm on 1 May.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 876 ha in 2019, 1,470 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,471 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Powys where it started1,461 ha reached on 27 Apr0.3 %
-
14 ha0.0 %
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 land100 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 93 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 2 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Elan Valley wildfires · Elan Valley wildfire
Sources
- Farmer tells of watching her 'home' burn as restored peatland helped halt Elan Valley wildfire — Nation.Cymru, 24 May 2026
- 2026 in Wales — Wikipedia (solo pista)
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Apr | 16.4 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 28 Apr after | 10.1 °C | 66 % | 54 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 7 |
| 29 Apr after | 15.6 °C | 31 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 30 Apr after | 18.6 °C | 34 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 1 May after | 15.0 °C | 50 % | 30 km/h | 4.8 mm | Very low 0 |
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 28 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 222 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 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 · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,018 haPowys7 April 2025 · 5 days · 1 km away
- 1,322 haPowysMarch 2019 · 2 days · 2 km away
- 6,367 haPowys26 April 2026 · 6 days · 7 km away
- 2,246 haCeredigion22 March 2020 · 6 days · 9 km away
- 956 haCarmarthenshire18 March 2026 · 2 days · 17 km away
- 692 haCarmarthenshire22 March 2020 · 6 days · 17 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Elan Valley fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (27 April 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 27 April 2026 (1 day from 27 April 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 1,480 hectares (14.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Powys (1,461 ha, 0.3 %); Ceredigion (14 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 16.4 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, class Low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United Kingdom (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: 999 · 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. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 2 confirmed sources.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- 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 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 (Open Government Licence v3.0). 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.