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Poliske fire, May 2022 Поліський район · Poliske

Out · last detection 12 May 2022, 11:05 UTC

The fire started on 12 May 2022 in Poliske, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 532 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 39th largest in Kyiv Oblast since 2016 (of 128 with a page). Number 80 in Ukraine in 2022, of 531.

Burnt area
532ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
12 May 2022 – 15 May 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
12 May
2022
Heat detections
27
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Energy released
30MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 May15 May

How it evolved, day by day

12

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
72km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.3 mm on 21 May.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Poliske Поліський район 5,622 inhabitants · 22.3 km from the town where it started
    530 ha reached on 12 May
    0.3 %

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

  • Coniferous forest49 %
  • Mixed forest38 %
  • Other natural land6.6 %
  • Agricultural areas5.7 %

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)
12 May 30.2 °C 22 % 72 km/h 0.6 mm High 35
13 May 21.5 °C 22 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 May 19.9 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 17
15 May 17.4 °C 37 % 52 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 19
16 May after 18.9 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
17 May after 18.7 °C 19 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 May after 13.2 °C 46 % 58 km/h 3.3 mm Low 5
19 May after 20.6 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
20 May after 25.2 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 17
21 May after 22.5 °C 53 % 64 km/h 7.3 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 May 2022
After · 22 May 2022

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 12 May 2022 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1018 µg/m³
101112131415161718192021
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 · 27Every 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 Poliske fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 May 2022 and 15 May 2022: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 532 hectares (5.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Poliske (530 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 22.3 km of Poliske. 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 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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.