Powys fire, 25 March 2020 Powys
The fire started on 25 March 2020 in Powys, United Kingdom, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 113 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
This entry is probably a heather, gorse or hill-grazing burn, not a wildfire. In the UK and Ireland moors and hillsides are burnt every winter and spring to renew grazing or heather. This is our assumption, based on the time of year, ground with almost no woodland and the lack of news about this fire; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 113ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 25 Mar 2020 – 25 Mar 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Mar
- 2020
- Danger at start
- 1
- Very low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 15 ha in 2018.
What happened to each town
-
Powys where it started112 ha0.0 %
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 land100 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Mar | 12.8 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 26 Mar after | 11.8 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 27 Mar after | 9.9 °C | 46 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 28 Mar after | 8.2 °C | 55 % | 64 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 29 Mar after | 6.1 °C | 43 % | 66 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 30 Mar after | 7.5 °C | 55 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 31 Mar after | 8.0 °C | 52 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 1 Apr after | 6.9 °C | 56 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 2 Apr after | 9.2 °C | 71 % | 49 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very low 3 |
| 3 Apr after | 9.8 °C | 62 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 4 Apr after | 11.8 °C | 55 % | 51 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 4 |
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 27 March 2020 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 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)
Other fires nearby
- 1,089 haPowys20 March 2022 · 3 days · 2 km away
- 562 haCarmarthenshire24 March 2020 · 4 days · 10 km away
- 1,470 haMerthyr Tydfil24 March 2022 · 2 days · 23 km away
- 1,200 haPowys11 April 2020 · 6 days · 23 km away
- 1,017 haMerthyr TydfilApril 2026 · 8 days · 23 km away
- 956 haCarmarthenshire18 March 2026 · 2 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Powys fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 25 March 2020 and 25 March 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 113 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Powys (112 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 12.8 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 1, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.