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UA · Ukraine ·

Popasna fire, 15 August 2026 Попаснянський район · Popasna

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2026, 10:02 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2026 in Popasna, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 110 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 819th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 890 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.2 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…

Suggestions: Lutuhyne · 2025Popasna · 2026Popasna · 2024Perevalsk · 2025

Burnt area
110ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 1day
15 Aug 2026 – 15 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Aug
2026
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 9 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
14MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug15 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 2026 · 14 MW · 2

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

The weather it burned in

23°high
28km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25 ha in 2024.

What happened to each town

  1. Popasna Попаснянський район 40,204 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre where it started
    110 ha reached on 15 Aug
    0.1 %

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 areas76 %
  • Other natural land24 %

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)
15 Aug 22.7 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Aug after 28.0 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
17 Aug after 30.0 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Aug after 31.7 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Aug after 28.3 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm High 33
20 Aug after 26.8 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
21 Aug after 31.4 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Aug after 33.5 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Aug after 33.4 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Aug after 26.3 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Aug after 25.5 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 24.8, a minimum humidity of 33% and 2 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2020: 26.

FWI at the start 24.8
Minimum humidity 33 %
Days without rain 2
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Lutuhyne fire, July 2025
311 ha 1 day FWI 24.3 Min. humidity 33 % 47 km away, in 2025

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 3 Aug.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
194 ha
median area
0 %
went past 1,000 ha
3.3 mm
rain at the end (median; 21 of 26 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 110 ha against a median of 194 ha. It lasted 1 day, against 3 days.

In 5 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.3 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
28km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 15 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 21 of 26, with a median of 3.3 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2020.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2026
After · 22 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 18 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.34
13 Aug15 Aug17 Aug
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 · 2Every 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 Popasna fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (15 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 15 August 2026 (1 day from 15 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 110 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Popasna (110 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Popasna and came within 3.6 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 22.7 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2020 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 26. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 194 ha; 0 % went past 1,000 ha. In 5 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.3 mm.

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.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 2 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology

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.