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JP · Japan · –

Aomori fire, October 2026 青森市 · Tsugaru, Goshogawara, Nakadomari

Out · last measured on 13 Oct 2026

Satellites first detected fire on 9 October 2026 in Aomori, Japan. It was active for 5 days, with 15 heat detections and an area with fire of about 210 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 8 municipalities.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Area with fire
≈ 210ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
5days
9 Oct 2026 – 13 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
8
municipalities
Started on
9 Oct
2026
Heat detections
15
in a single hotspot: 5 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct13 Oct

The weather it burned in

23°high
49km/h · peak gust
43%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. Tsugaru つがる市
    98 ha reached on 9 Oct
    0.4 %
  2. Goshogawara 五所川原市
    42 ha reached on 9 Oct
    0.1 %
  3. Nakadomari 中泊町
    28 ha reached on 9 Oct
    0.1 %
  4. Aomori 青森市 where it started
    14 ha reached on 9 Oct
    0.0 %
  5. Itayanagi 板柳町
    14 ha reached on 10 Oct
    0.3 %
  6. Hirosaki 弘前市
    14 ha reached on 11 Oct
    0.0 %
  7. Kuroishi 黒石市
    0 ha reached on 10 Oct
    0.0 %
  8. Tsuruta 鶴田町
    0 ha reached on 10 Oct
    0.0 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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.

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)
7 Oct 19.0 °C 46 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 5
8 Oct 21.0 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
9 Oct 22.5 °C 51 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
10 Oct 23.3 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Oct 2026
After · 20 Oct 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 9 October 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
PM1022 µg/m³
Optical depth0.22
5 Oct7 Oct9 Oct
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 · 15Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aomori fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 9 October 2026 to 13 October 2026 (5 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 210 hectares with fire (2.1 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 8 municipalities: Tsugaru (98 ha, 0.4 %); Goshogawara (42 ha, 0.1 %); Nakadomari (28 ha, 0.1 %); Aomori (14 ha, 0.0 %); Itayanagi (14 ha, 0.3 %); Hirosaki (14 ha, 0.0 %); Kuroishi (0 ha, 0.0 %); Tsuruta (0 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.3 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, class Low.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Japan (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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night 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.

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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 119.

How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 210 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 15 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology

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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.