Wiltshire fire, 2 July 2018 Wiltshire
The fire started on 2 July 2018 in Wiltshire, United Kingdom, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,478 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in England since 2016 (of 29 with a page). Number 3 in United Kingdom in 2018, of 19.
The power measured by the satellite is low (20.5 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
- 1,478ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 2 Jul 2018 – 8 Jul 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 2 Jul
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 32
- in a single hotspot: 20 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 15MW
- 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 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.9 mm on 13 Jul.
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).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Wiltshire where it started1,474 ha reached on 2 Jul0.4 %
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 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 100 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Jul | 27.4 °C | 28 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Jul | 25.3 °C | 35 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Jul | 22.1 °C | 53 % | 28 km/h | 1.5 mm | Low 7 |
| 5 Jul | 26.4 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 6 Jul | 26.9 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 7 Jul | 27.1 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 8 Jul | 28.4 °C | 35 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 9 Jul after | 27.1 °C | 43 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 10 Jul after | 22.9 °C | 37 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 11 Jul after | 23.8 °C | 40 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 12 Jul after | 23.5 °C | 46 % | 25 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 13 Jul after | 23.5 °C | 52 % | 28 km/h | 4.9 mm | Very low 3 |
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 5 July 2018 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 32Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wiltshire fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 July 2018 to 8 July 2018 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 July 2018 to 7 July 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,478 hectares (14.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Wiltshire (1,474 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 50 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 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 July 2018 to 7 July 2018. 32 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.
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.