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Roscommon LEA-6 fire, May 2025 Roscommon LEA-6, Swinford LEA-4

Out · last detection 19 May 2025, 13:08 UTC

The fire started on 18 May 2025 in Roscommon LEA-6, Ireland, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 520 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Connacht since 2016 (of 13 with a page). The largest in Ireland in 2025, of 4.

Burnt area
520ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
18 May 2025 – 19 May 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local electoral areas
Started on
18 May
2025
Heat detections
18
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
92MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 May19 May
19 May 2025

How it evolved, day by day

18 May 2025 · 135 MW · 2 19 May 2025 · 50 MW · 16
18 May 19 May

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

The weather it burned in

22°high
37km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 23 May.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.3% of the area of London (5.2 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Roscommon LEA-6 where it started
    514 ha reached on 18 May
    0.6 %
  2. 5 ha
    0.0 %

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 land90 %
  • Coniferous forest6.0 %
  • Agricultural areas4.1 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 46 %

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)
18 May 22.4 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
19 May 17.8 °C 54 % 37 km/h 1.1 mm Low 6
20 May after 18.2 °C 44 % 20 km/h 0.1 mm Low 7
21 May after 20.2 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
22 May after 19.1 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
23 May after 15.9 °C 81 % 35 km/h 2.9 mm Very low 1

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 13.6, a minimum humidity of 33% and 21 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 13.

FWI at the start 13.6
Minimum humidity 33 %
Days without rain 21
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Loughrea LEA-5 fire, May 2020
367 ha 4 days FWI 13.4 Min. humidity 36 % 86 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 5 Jun.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 13. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

2.9 mmfirst rain
23 May4 days after it ended
37km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 19 May, and on 23 May 2.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 · 11 May 2025
After · 26 May 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 16 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1013 µg/m³
Optical depth0.36
16 May18 May20 May22 May
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 · 18Every 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 18 May 2025 and 19 May 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 520 hectares (5.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Roscommon LEA-6 (514 ha, 0.6 %); Swinford LEA-4 (5 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.4 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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.

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. 18 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 (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.