Pavlohrad fire, September 2025 Павлоградський район · Pavlohrad
The fire started on 16 September 2025 in Pavlohrad, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,866 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast since 2016 (of 183 with a page). Number 25 in Ukraine in 2025, of 1359.
The power measured by the satellite is low (16.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,866ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 16 Sept 2025 – 17 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 16 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 7
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 21MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.3 mm on 18 Sept.
This area had burned before
74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 438 ha in 2023, 1,370 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,377 ha that had burned before.
- 1,370 ha Pavlohrad fire, July 2024 1,936 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 369 ha Pavlohrad fire, October 2023 413 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 68 ha Pavlohrad fire, September 2023 163 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Pavlohrad fire, September 2023 415 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Kyiv boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © 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
-
1,858 ha reached on 16 Sept0.8 %
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
- Agricultural areas91 %
- Other natural land5.8 %
- Mixed forest3.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Sept | 24.1 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 17 Sept | 24.8 °C | 32 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 18 Sept after | 17.4 °C | 46 % | 34 km/h | 9.3 mm | Very low 0 |
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 20 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 20 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 · 7Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,936 haPavlohrad Павлоградський район18 July 2024 · 5 days · 3 km away
- 551 haVasylkivka Васильківський район7 August 2025 · 8 days · 12 km away
- 597 haPavlohrad Павлоградський район25 October 2021 · 4 days · 25 km away
- 1,026 haPavlohrad Павлоградський район24 March 2022 · 1 day · 30 km away
- 811 haPavlohrad Павлоградський район3 October 2024 · 1 day · 30 km away
- 550 haPetropavlivka Петропавлівський районSeptember 2025 · 3 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pavlohrad fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 16 September 2025 and 17 September 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,866 hectares (18.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Pavlohrad (1,858 ha, 0.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Pavlohrad and came within 22.1 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 24.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very 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 · 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 7 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 (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.