Khobi fire, December 2025 Khobi
The fire started on 21 December 2025 in Khobi, Georgia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 532 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 12th largest in Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti since 2016 (of 25 with a page). Number 22 in Georgia in 2025, of 53.
The power measured by the satellite is low (20.3 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…
Suggestions: Khobi · 2021Khobi · 2017Khobi · 2017Khobi · 2023
- Burnt area
- 532ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 21 Dec 2025 – 21 Dec 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 8
- in a single hotspot: 20 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 82MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
21 Dec 2025 · 82 MW · 8
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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.2 mm on 24 Dec.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 783 ha in 2017, 33 ha in 2019, 449 ha in 2021, 214 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 518 ha that had burned before.
- 449 ha Khobi fire, December 2021 572 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 407 ha Khobi fire, December 2017 670 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 375 ha Khobi fire, January 2017 718 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 214 ha Khobi fire, January 2023 422 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Khobi where it started532 ha0.7 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Dec | 12.2 °C | 58 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 22 Dec after | 12.4 °C | 53 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 1 |
| 23 Dec after | 14.8 °C | 60 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 24 Dec after | 9.7 °C | 73 % | 32 km/h | 10.2 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 20 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 17 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)
Detections table · 8Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,123 haKhobi13 December 2019 · 2 days · 5 km away
- 1,105 haKhobiJanuary 2026 · 2 days · 5 km away
- 3,048 haLanchkhuti12 December 2021 · 2 days · 20 km away
- 1,873 haLanchkhuti23 December 2016 · 2 days · 20 km away
- 2,785 haZugdidiMarch 2020 · 7 days · 33 km away
- 3,097 haGali4 January 2021 · 2 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Khobi fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 December 2025 and 21 December 2025: 1 day 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 532 hectares (5.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Khobi (532 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 12.2 °C, humidity dropped to 58 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Georgia (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
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. 8 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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.