Lufeng County fire, February 2025 禄丰市 · Lufeng County
The fire started on 17 February 2025 in Lufeng County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,276 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 128th largest in Yunnan Province since 2016 (of 216 with a page). Number 514 in China in 2025, of 715.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,276ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 17 Feb 2025 – 20 Feb 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 17 Feb
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 34
- in a single hotspot: 215 MW
- Danger at start
- 12
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 193MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.2 mm on 24 Feb.
This area had burned before
16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 203 ha in 2023.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,282 ha0.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Feb | 21.3 °C | 24 % | 52 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 18 Feb | 21.4 °C | 17 % | 77 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 19 Feb | 21.4 °C | 20 % | 66 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 20 Feb | 23.2 °C | 14 % | 60 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 21 Feb after | 22.4 °C | 19 % | 67 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 22 Feb after | 22.9 °C | 14 % | 68 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 31 |
| 23 Feb after | 22.7 °C | 22 % | 60 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 24 Feb after | 18.2 °C | 52 % | 63 km/h | 5.2 mm | Very low 3 |
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 16 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.6 times the WHO daily 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 · 34Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lufeng County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 February 2025 and 20 February 2025: 4 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 1,276 hectares (12.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lufeng County (1,282 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 23.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 77 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119
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. 34 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 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.