Burned area
satellite only728ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 2 July 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AL · Albania · –
Malësi e Madhe fire, 19 July 2025 Malësi e Madhe
Out · last detection 28 Jul 2025, 01:28 UTC
The fire started on 19 July 2025 in Malësi e Madhe, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 728 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 14th largest in Shkodër since 2016 (of 82 with a page). Number 18 in Albania in 2025, of 71.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only10days
19 Jul 2025 to 28 Jul 2025: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 28 Jul 2025, 01:28 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only19 Jul 2025
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 19 Jul 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only68
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 62 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 19 Jul 2025 – 28 Jul 2025
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only268MW
Total radiative power on 26 July 2025; hotspots that day: 18.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 26 Jul 2025
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model9.8FWI · low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 1.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 19 Jul 2025, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model29.7°C · 24% RH
High of 29.7 °C and minimum humidity of 24% on 26 July 2025; gusts of 48 km/h on 27 July 2025.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 19 Jul 2025 – 28 Jul 2025
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 728 ha
- Dates
- 19 Jul 2025 – 28 Jul 2025
- Name
- Malësi e Madhe
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/malesi-e-madhe-2025-07-4?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire malesi-e-madhe-2025-07-4.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-07-19 | 2 | 11 | 23 | 8.8 | 35 | 7.5 | 25.2 | 0 | 9.8 | bajo | 1 |
| 2025-07-20 | 1 | 1 | 24.4 | 13.8 | 43 | 10.3 | 36 | 0 | 17.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2025-07-21 | 0 | 0 | 25.5 | 13.6 | 33 | 10.9 | 37.8 | 0 | 22.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-22 | 0 | 0 | 25.6 | 14 | 32 | 11.2 | 42.1 | 0 | 25.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-23 | 5 | 59 | 25 | 11.7 | 36 | 9.8 | 31 | 0 | 23.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-24 | 4 | 8 | 27.1 | 12.1 | 29 | 9.7 | 29.5 | 0 | 25.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-25 | 12 | 70 | 28.6 | 14.4 | 28 | 8.9 | 32.8 | 0 | 27.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-26 | 18 | 268 | 29.7 | 15.9 | 24 | 16.9 | 47.2 | 0 | 36.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-27 | 23 | 66 | 20.7 | 12.5 | 40 | 13.9 | 48.2 | 2.2 | 10.9 | bajo | 1 |
| 2025-07-28 | 3 | 4 | 18.3 | 11 | 59 | 8.7 | 31.7 | 4.9 | 10.9 | bajo | 1 |
| 2025-07-29 | 0 | 0 | 15.3 | 10.7 | 67 | 7.5 | 36.4 | 22.5 | 0.1 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 728ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 10days
- 19 Jul 2025 – 28 Jul 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 68
- in a single hotspot: 62 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 61MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
19 Jul28 Jul
28 Jul 2025
How it evolved, day by day
19 Jul
23 Jul
26 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
30°high
48km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 22.5 mm on 29 Jul.
This area had burned before
30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 52 ha in 2017, 162 ha in 2020.
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
-
Malësi e Madhe where it started728 ha reached on 19 Jul0.7 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.
What burned
- Mixed forest39 %
- Other natural land24 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland18 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub12 %
- Broadleaved forest6.3 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Jul | 23.0 °C | 35 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 20 Jul | 24.4 °C | 43 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 21 Jul | 25.5 °C | 33 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 22 Jul | 25.6 °C | 32 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 23 Jul | 25.0 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 24 Jul | 27.1 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 25 Jul | 28.6 °C | 28 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 26 Jul | 29.7 °C | 24 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 27 Jul | 20.7 °C | 40 % | 48 km/h | 2.2 mm | Low 11 |
| 28 Jul | 18.3 °C | 59 % | 32 km/h | 4.9 mm | Low 11 |
| 29 Jul after | 15.3 °C | 67 % | 36 km/h | 22.5 mm | Very low 0 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 9.8, a minimum humidity of 35% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 19.
FWI at the start
9.8
Minimum humidity
35 %
Days without rain
1
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Malësi e Madhe fire, 19 July 2025
728 ha
10 days
FWI 9.8
Min. humidity 35 %
Pukë fire, August 2016
237 ha
10 days
FWI 11.2
Min. humidity 37 %
63 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 34.7 mm on 6 Sept.
Dibër fire, July 2020
143 ha
4 days
FWI 8.1
Min. humidity 34 %
108 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.8 mm on 1 Aug.
Shkodër fire, March 2020
109 ha
3 days
FWI 7.1
Min. humidity 34 %
31 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.9 mm on 23 Mar.
Gostivar fire, October 2017
303 ha
3 days
FWI 9.3
Min. humidity 35 %
109 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.6 mm on 23 Oct.
Debartsa fire, July 2024
1,111 ha
10 days
FWI 7.2
Min. humidity 35 %
175 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 3 days
- median duration
- 136 ha
- median area
- 5 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 6.4 mm
- rain at the end (median; 14 of 19 had it)
It was 5.4 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 10 days, against 3 days.
Only 1 of its 19 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 5 of 19, 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 6.4 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
22.5 mmfirst rain
29 Julthe day after it ended
48km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 28 Jul, and on 29 Jul 22.5 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 14 of 19, with a median of 6.4 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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 12 Jul 2025
After · 4 Aug 2025
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 22 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.37
19 Jul21 Jul23 Jul25 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 · 68Every 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
- 2,739 haPodgorica Municipality11 August 2025 · 4 days · 19 km away
- 1,830 haPodgorica Municipality22 August 2017 · 7 days · 20 km away
- 4,057 haPodgorica Municipality11 August 2025 · 7 days · 25 km away
- 2,013 haPodgorica MunicipalityFebruary 2021 · 7 days · 28 km away
- 2,281 haPodgorica Municipality29 July 2024 · 6 days · 29 km away
- 6,019 haPodgorica Municipality1 August 2017 · 26 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Malësi e Madhe fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 July 2025 to 28 July 2025 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 July 2025 to 23 July 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 728 hectares (7.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Malësi e Madhe (728 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 19. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 136 ha; 5 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 1 of its 19 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 5 of 19, 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 6.4 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: 128 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
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 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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 July 2025 to 23 July 2025. 68 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 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic). 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.