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AZ · Azerbaijan · –

Khojavend District fire, 20 July 2025 Khojavend District

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2025, 08:46 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2025 in Khojavend District, Azerbaijan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 74th largest in Contiguous Azerbaijan since 2016 (of 278 with a page). Number 4 in Azerbaijan in 2025, of 18.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,138ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
20 Jul 2025 – 25 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Jul
2025
Heat detections
37
in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
52MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul25 Jul
25 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jul 2025 · 9 MW · 2 23 Jul 2025 · 3 MW · 3 24 Jul 2025 · 176 MW · 30 25 Jul 2025 · 20 MW · 2
20 Jul 23 Jul 24 Jul 25 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
35km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 225 ha in 2016, 371 ha in 2017, 444 ha in 2018, 435 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 762 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

  1. Khojavend District where it started
    1,141 ha reached on 20 Jul
    0.8 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.68 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.68 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
20 Jul 33.6 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Jul 34.2 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Jul 33.9 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Jul 33.6 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Jul 34.4 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Jul 33.6 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Jul after 33.1 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Jul after 33.6 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Jul after 33.9 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Jul after 32.3 °C 53 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
30 Jul after 34.0 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
31 Jul after 34.6 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Aug after 32.9 °C 55 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
2 Aug after 33.2 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
3 Aug after 34.3 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
4 Aug after 34.7 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 22.8, a minimum humidity of 41% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 20.

FWI at the start 22.8
Minimum humidity 41 %
Days without rain 9
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Khojavend District fire, August 2020
503 ha 1 day FWI 24.3 Min. humidity 41 % 8 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.8 mm on 15 Aug.

What happened to them

2 days
median duration
800 ha
median area
25 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.3 mm
rain at the end (median; 11 of 20 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (1,138 ha against a median of 800 ha) and lasted 6 days, against 2 days.

In 9 of 20, 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 2.3 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

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
35km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 25 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 11 of 20, with a median of 2.3 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jul 2025
After · 1 Aug 2025

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 26 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1099 µg/m³
Optical depth0.69
21 Jul23 Jul25 Jul27 Jul
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 · 37Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Azerbaijan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Khojavend District fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 July 2025 to 25 July 2025 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 July 2025 to 25 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,138 hectares (11.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Khojavend District (1,141 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Azerbaijan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 20. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 800 ha; 25 % went past 1,000 ha. In 9 of 20, 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 2.3 mm.

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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 23 July 2025 → 20 July 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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?

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 23 July 2025 to 25 July 2025. 37 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 3.0 Unported). 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.