How long did the Kozelets fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 30 August 2025 and 2 September 2025: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 550 hectares (5.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kozelets (550 ha, 0.2 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 22.9 km of Kozelets. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

UA · Ukraine · 2025-08-30 → 2025-09-02

Kozelets fire, August 2025 Козелецький район · Kozelets

Out · last detection 3 Sept 2025, 11:20 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2025 in Kozelets, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 550 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 21th largest in Chernihiv Oblast since 2016 (of 156 with a page). Number 148 in Ukraine in 2025, of 1359.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.6 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: 550ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 4days; 30 Aug 2025 – 2 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 50; in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Energy released: 245MW; sum of detected power

Play back 3 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug2 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

3031123

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

41km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 8 Sept.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 46 ha in 2024.

46 ha Kozelets fire, September 2024 444 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Kozelets Козелецький район 22.9 km from the town where it started

550 ha reached on 29 Aug

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

Other natural land86 %
Agricultural areas14 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
29 Aug	29.9 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
30 Aug	31.4 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
31 Aug	31.8 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
1 Sept	30.2 °C	39 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
2 Sept	24.7 °C	46 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
3 Sept after	25.1 °C	42 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
4 Sept after	25.9 °C	42 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
5 Sept after	24.3 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
6 Sept after	24.0 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
7 Sept after	22.1 °C	46 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
8 Sept after	24.5 °C	52 %	35 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Aug 2025

After · 9 Sept 2025

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

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1022 µg/m³

Optical depth0.26

WHO 15

2829303112345

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 · 50Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kozelets fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 30 August 2025 and 2 September 2025: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 550 hectares (5.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kozelets (550 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 22.9 km of Kozelets. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 112

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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 101 · 112.

Where this data comes from

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.

Where it burned