Satellites first detected fire on 18 September 2026 in Henichesk, Ukraine. It was active for 3 days, with 4 heat detections and an area with fire of about 154 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across a single municipality.
The power measured by the satellite is low (10.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Estimated from hotspots: no perimeter has been published yet.
This is an estimate from the VIIRS pixels that saw fire. It will change when the perimeter is published.
18 Sept 2026 to 20 Sept 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 10 MW.
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
Total radiative power on 20 September 2026; hotspots that day: 3.
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 3.
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
High of 27.9 °C and minimum humidity of 39% on 20 September 2026; gusts of 31 km/h on 20 September 2026.
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-18 | 0 | 0 | 24.5 | 11.7 | 39 | 14.2 | 25.6 | 0 | 22.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-09-19 | 1 | 5 | 27.6 | 12 | 31 | 13 | 24.5 | 0 | 26.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-09-20 | 3 | 16 | 27.9 | 14.7 | 39 | 16.3 | 31.3 | 0 | 29.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-09-21 | 0 | 0 | 25.6 | 16.9 | 55 | 16 | 29.5 | 4.8 | 5.3 | bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.8 mm on 21 Sept.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Sept | 24.5 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 19 Sept | 27.6 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 20 Sept | 27.9 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Sept after | 25.6 °C | 55 % | 30 km/h | 4.8 mm | Low 5 |
It started with an FWI of 22.7, a minimum humidity of 39% and 3 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2022: 18.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.3 mm on 19 Aug.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.6 mm on 14 Jun.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.1 mm on 14 Jun.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
It burned an area similar to its twins (154 ha against a median of 208 ha) and lasted 3 days, against 4 days.
In 3 of 18, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.7 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
It was considered over on 20 Sept, and on 21 Sept 4.8 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 18, with a median of 4.7 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
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.
On 18 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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)
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
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
No changes since 24 October 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
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.