Guangling County fire, 19 February 2026 广灵县 · Guangling County, Yu County
The fire started on 19 February 2026 in Guangling County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,269 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 24th largest in Shanxi Province since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 309 in China in 2026, of 913.
The power measured by the satellite is low (13.4 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
- 2,269ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 19 Feb 2026 – 21 Feb 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 19 Feb
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 45
- in a single hotspot: 13 MW
- Danger at start
- 16
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 310MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
21 Feb 2026 · 310 MW · 45
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 57 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 28 Feb.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
1,427 ha1.2 %
-
Yu County 蔚县845 ha0.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Feb | 10.2 °C | 8 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 20 Feb | 16.2 °C | 10 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 21 Feb | 13.0 °C | 9 % | 83 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Feb after | -0.6 °C | 19 % | 73 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 23 Feb after | 7.6 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 24 Feb after | 11.2 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 25 Feb after | 11.6 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.3 mm | Low 9 |
| 26 Feb after | 5.4 °C | 54 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 7 |
| 27 Feb after | 8.2 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 0.7 mm | Very low 4 |
| 28 Feb after | 1.7 °C | 69 % | 41 km/h | 1.2 mm | Very low 2 |
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 21 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 78 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 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 · 45Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,151 haYu County 蔚县21 February 2026 · 1 day · 8 km away
- 2,315 haGuangling County 广灵县21 February 2026 · 1 day · 13 km away
- 1,123 haGuangling County 广灵县21 February 2026 · 1 day · 23 km away
- 5,334 haYangyuan County 阳原县14 March 2026 · 14 days · 34 km away
- 3,277 haYangyuan County 阳原县February 2026 · 6 days · 36 km away
- 1,349 haYangyuan County 阳原县24 March 2026 · 4 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Guangling County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 February 2026 and 21 February 2026: 3 days 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 2,269 hectares (22.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guangling County (1,427 ha, 1.2 %); Yu County (845 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 16.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 83 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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
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
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. 45 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 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.