North Yorkshire fire, August 2025 North Yorkshire
The fire started on 25 August 2025 in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,677 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the largest fire in England since 2016 (of 29 with a page). Number 5 in United Kingdom in 2025, of 12.
Compare with…
Suggestions: North Yorkshire · 2020North Yorkshire · 2022
- Burnt area
- 1,677ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 25 Aug 2025 – 30 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 239
- in a single hotspot: 66 MW
- Danger at start
- 4
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 490MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 31 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
North Yorkshire where it started1,686 ha reached on 25 Aug0.2 %
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
- Other natural land92 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland5.7 %
- Coniferous forest1.7 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 89 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Aug | 19.4 °C | 48 % | 58 km/h | 2.6 mm | Very low 4 |
| 31 Aug after | 19.3 °C | 48 % | 59 km/h | 2.1 mm | Low 6 |
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 29 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 239Every 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 North Yorkshire fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 August 2025 to 30 August 2025 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 August 2025 to 30 August 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,677 hectares (16.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered North Yorkshire (1,686 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 19.4 °C, humidity dropped to 48 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United Kingdom (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: 999 · 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.
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 30 August 2025 to 30 August 2025. 239 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 ADM3 (Open Government Licence v3.0). 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.