Popasna fire, 3 May 2022 Попаснянський район · Popasna
The fire started on 3 May 2022 in Popasna, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 621 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 129th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 73 in Ukraine in 2022, of 531.
The power measured by the satellite is low (8.8 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
- 621ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 10days
- 3 May 2022 – 12 May 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 3 May
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 14
- in a single hotspot: 9 MW
- Danger at start
- 12
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 12MW
- 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 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 13 May.
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).
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
-
623 ha reached on 3 May0.3 %
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
- Coniferous forest80 %
- Mixed forest17 %
- Other natural land3.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 May | 18.2 °C | 22 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 4 May | 20.0 °C | 26 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 5 May | 16.1 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 6 May | 16.2 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 7 May | 17.8 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 8 May | 21.3 °C | 11 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 9 May | 22.5 °C | 25 % | 54 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 28 |
| 10 May | 13.3 °C | 27 % | 52 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 11 May | 16.8 °C | 27 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 12 May | 24.0 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 13 May after | 24.3 °C | 20 % | 50 km/h | 1.0 mm | High 27 |
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 4 May 2022 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily 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 · 14Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,980 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський районFebruary 2024 · 5 days · 11 km away
- 4,293 haPopasna Попаснянський районOctober 2020 · 7 days · 13 km away
- 7,135 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський район6 July 2020 · 5 days · 18 km away
- 3,400 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський район26 March 2024 · 10 days · 23 km away
- 12,789 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський районSeptember 2020 · 5 days · 24 km away
- 2,613 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський районApril 2025 · 7 days · 24 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Popasna fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 May 2022 to 12 May 2022 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 May 2022 to 8 May 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 621 hectares (6.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Popasna (623 ha, 0.3 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Popasna and came within 28.0 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 24.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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 · 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 May 2022 to 8 May 2022. 14 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.