How long did the Khalilabad fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2026 to 21 April 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 April 2026 to 17 April 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,799 hectares (88.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Khalilabad (6,859 ha, 12 %); Rudhauli (1,199 ha, 5.3 %); Mehdawal (768 ha, 1.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of India (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

IN · India · 2026-04-07 → 2026-04-21

Khalilabad fire, April 2026 Khalilabad, Rudhauli, Mehdawal

Out · last detection 21 Apr 2026, 20:10 UTC

The fire started on 7 April 2026 in Khalilabad, India, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,799 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

This entry is very probably agricultural burning of stubble or straw that the satellite has merged into a single perimeter, not a wildfire in natural vegetation. We reviewed it by hand: the perimeter comes only from GWIS, lies on densely populated farmland and matches the season when stubble is burnt after the harvest. That is why it is not included in the wildfire rankings.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bansi · 2022 Bansi · 2018 Itwa · 2026

Burnt area: 8,799ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 7 Apr 2026 – 21 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit: 3; subdistricts
Started on: 7 Apr; 2026
Heat detections: 508; in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 149MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Apr21 Apr

Play back 21 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

7 Apr 10 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 16 Apr 18 Apr 20 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

41°high

57km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.6 mm on 29 Apr.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,351 ha in 2016, 1,808 ha in 2017, 3,041 ha in 2018, 4,185 ha in 2019, 274 ha in 2020, 2,854 ha in 2021, 3,552 ha in 2022, 2,342 ha in 2023, 2,062 ha in 2024, 362 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,344 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.6% of the area of London (88 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Khalilabad where it started

6,859 ha reached on 7 Apr

12 %
Rudhauli

1,199 ha reached on 9 Apr

5.3 %
Mehdawal

768 ha reached on 10 Apr

1.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

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 Apr	35.3 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Apr	25.0 °C	54 %	38 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 17
9 Apr	31.6 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Apr	33.1 °C	18 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
11 Apr	34.3 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Apr	37.4 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
13 Apr	37.2 °C	15 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Apr	38.0 °C	16 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Apr	39.2 °C	15 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Apr	38.2 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
17 Apr	37.1 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Apr	40.2 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Apr	39.7 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Apr	41.3 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
21 Apr	41.4 °C	11 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
22 Apr after	41.1 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
23 Apr after	40.8 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
24 Apr after	40.4 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
25 Apr after	41.4 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 54
26 Apr after	38.3 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 45
27 Apr after	35.4 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Apr after	36.5 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Apr after	36.9 °C	43 %	44 km/h	16.6 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Mar 2026

After · 28 Apr 2026

Before After

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 24 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 99 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak99 µg/m³

Days over the guideline23 days

PM10466 µg/m³

Optical depth1.15

WHO 15

56789101112131415161718192021222324252627

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 · 508Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in India ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Khalilabad fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2026 to 21 April 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 April 2026 to 17 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,799 hectares (88.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Khalilabad (6,859 ha, 12 %); Rudhauli (1,199 ha, 5.3 %); Mehdawal (768 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of India (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: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 17 April 2026 → 21 April 2026.
26 October 2026 Start date: 8 April 2026 → 7 April 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 April 2026 to 17 April 2026. 508 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.
Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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 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.

Where it burned