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IE · Ireland ·

Roscommon LEA-6 fire, April 2025 Roscommon LEA-6

Out · last detection 9 Apr 2025, 13:58 UTC

The fire started on 9 April 2025 in Roscommon LEA-6, Ireland, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 111 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.

Burnt area
111ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
9 Apr 2025 – 9 Apr 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local electoral areas
Started on
9 Apr
2025
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
153MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Apr9 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

9 Apr 2025 · 153 MW · 4

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

The weather it burned in

19°high
20km/h · peak gust
46%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 13 Apr.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Roscommon LEA-6 where it started
    111 ha reached on 9 Apr
    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

  • Other natural land79 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland21 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 36 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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)
9 Apr 18.9 °C 46 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
10 Apr after 19.2 °C 48 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
11 Apr after 19.4 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
12 Apr after 13.1 °C 56 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Low 7
13 Apr after 9.4 °C 64 % 51 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 4.3, a minimum humidity of 46% and 11 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 18.

FWI at the start 4.3
Minimum humidity 46 %
Days without rain 11
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Fermanagh and Omagh fire, May 2017
300 ha 3 days FWI 6.0 Min. humidity 48 % 131 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 8.7 mm on 12 May.

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
278 ha
median area
17 %
went past 1,000 ha
3.9 mm
rain at the end (median; 15 of 18 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 111 ha against a median of 278 ha. It lasted 1 day, against 3 days.

In 3 of 18, 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 3.9 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

3.5 mmfirst rain
13 Apr4 days after it ended
20km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 9 Apr, and on 13 Apr 3.5 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 18, with a median of 3.9 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 2016.
  • 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 · 2 Apr 2025
After · 16 Apr 2025

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 9 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1033 µg/m³
Optical depth0.22
7 Apr9 Apr11 Apr
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 · 4Every 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 Ireland

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Roscommon LEA-6 fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 9 April 2025 and 9 April 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 111 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Roscommon LEA-6 (111 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 18.9 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 20 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, class Very low.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ireland (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 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 18. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 278 ha; 17 % went past 1,000 ha. In 3 of 18, 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 3.9 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: 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.

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 999 · 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 4 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.