How long did the Talamadugu fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 March 2026 and 25 March 2026: 7 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 5,130 hectares (51.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kinwat (3,613 ha, 2.2 %); Talamadugu (1,546 ha, 5.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.

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 · 2026-03-19 → 2026-03-25

Talamadugu fire, March 2026 Kinwat, Talamadugu

Out · last detection 25 Mar 2026, 07:47 UTC

The fire started on 19 March 2026 in Talamadugu, India, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,130 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 17th largest in Telangāna since 2016 (of 17 with a page). Number 56 in India in 2026, of 58.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.3 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…

Burnt area: 5,130ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 19 Mar 2026 – 25 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; subdistricts
Started on: 19 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 123; in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 58MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Mar25 Mar

Play back 25 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

19 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

37km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 542 ha in 2016, 2,141 ha in 2017, 1,846 ha in 2021, 1,237 ha in 2022, 387 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,629 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Kinwat

3,613 ha

2.2 %
Talamadugu where it started

1,546 ha

5.6 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
13 Mar	38.6 °C	17 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
14 Mar	37.9 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
15 Mar	36.6 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 40
16 Mar	36.3 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
17 Mar	36.3 °C	26 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Mar	32.0 °C	37 %	37 km/h	1.1 mm	High 24
19 Mar	33.3 °C	32 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Mar	32.3 °C	35 %	22 km/h	0.8 mm	High 24
21 Mar	33.7 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Mar	33.7 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Mar	35.5 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Mar	36.5 °C	25 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Mar	38.2 °C	24 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Mar after	37.9 °C	24 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
27 Mar after	37.6 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Mar after	39.1 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Mar after	38.2 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Mar after	37.7 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 38
31 Mar after	34.6 °C	38 %	23 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
1 Apr after	37.1 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
2 Apr after	34.9 °C	38 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Apr after	36.6 °C	33 %	19 km/h	0.7 mm	High 32
4 Apr after	34.5 °C	38 %	23 km/h	0.6 mm	High 27
5 Apr after	36.0 °C	29 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
6 Apr after	35.6 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Apr after	36.0 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Apr after	37.0 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
9 Apr after	36.3 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
10 Apr after	37.1 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Apr after	38.5 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Mar 2026

After · 1 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 17 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM1071 µg/m³

Optical depth0.78

WHO 15

171819202122232425262728

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 · 123Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Talamadugu fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 March 2026 and 25 March 2026: 7 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 5,130 hectares (51.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kinwat (3,613 ha, 2.2 %); Talamadugu (1,546 ha, 5.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 123 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 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