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Melitopol fire, 8 August 2026 Мелітопольський район · Melitopol

Out · last detection 9 Aug 2026, 10:13 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2026 in Melitopol, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 231 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 171th largest in Zaporizhzhia Oblast since 2016 (of 490 with a page). Number 392 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

Burnt area
231ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
8 Aug 2026 – 8 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
8 Aug
2026
Heat detections
11
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
358MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug8 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

89

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
32km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 70 ha in 2025.

What happened to each town

  1. Melitopol Мелітопольський район 48,698 inhabitants · 17.6 km from the town where it started
    232 ha reached on 8 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 areas12 %
  • Mixed forest2.6 %

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)
8 Aug 36.8 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Aug after 32.5 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Aug after 32.2 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
11 Aug after 34.2 °C 34 % 20 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
12 Aug after 31.8 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Aug after 24.9 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Aug after 25.2 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Aug after 26.5 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Aug after 28.9 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Aug after 31.2 °C 20 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Aug after 32.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Aug 2026
After · 15 Aug 2026

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 11 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1024 µg/m³
Optical depth0.41
67891011
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 · 11Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Melitopol fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2026 and 8 August 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 231 hectares (2.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Melitopol (232 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 17.6 km of Melitopol. 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 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

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
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 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.