Burned area
satellite only709ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 18 June 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
UK · United Kingdom · –
Wiltshire fire, April 2025 Wiltshire
Out · last detection 3 Apr 2025, 12:29 UTC
The fire started on 1 April 2025 in Wiltshire, United Kingdom, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 709 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.
The power measured by the satellite is low (6.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only3days
1 Apr 2025 to 3 Apr 2025: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 3 Apr 2025, 12:29 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only1 Apr 2025
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 1 Apr 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only3
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 7 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 1 Apr 2025 – 3 Apr 2025
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only9MW
Total radiative power on 2 April 2025; hotspots that day: 2.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Apr 2025
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model11.0FWI · low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 10.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 1 Apr 2025, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model18.0°C · 44% RH
High of 18.0 °C and minimum humidity of 44% on 3 April 2025; gusts of 56 km/h on 2 April 2025.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 1 Apr 2025 – 3 Apr 2025
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 709 ha
- Dates
- 1 Apr 2025 – 3 Apr 2025
- Name
- Wiltshire
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/wiltshire-2025-04?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire wiltshire-2025-04.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-04-01 | 0 | 0 | 14.9 | 3 | 42 | 23.6 | 47.5 | 0 | 11 | bajo | 1 |
| 2025-04-02 | 2 | 9 | 16 | 4.4 | 41 | 30 | 55.8 | 0 | 15.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2025-04-03 | 1 | 3 | 18 | 6.2 | 44 | 24.2 | 46.8 | 0.3 | 13.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2025-04-04 | 0 | 0 | 20.9 | 9.5 | 38 | 23.5 | 44.6 | 1.6 | 6.5 | bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 709ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 1 Apr 2025 – 3 Apr 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 1 Apr
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 3
- in a single hotspot: 7 MW
- Danger at start
- 11
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 6MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
1 Apr3 Apr
3 Apr 2025
How it evolved, day by day
2 Apr
3 Apr
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
18°high
56km/h · peak gust
41%lowest humidity
It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 4 Apr.
This area had burned before
82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 497 ha in 2018, 288 ha in 2021, 100 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 580 ha that had burned before.
- 326 ha Wiltshire fire, July 2018 1,478 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 288 ha Wiltshire fire, February 2021 370 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 153 ha Wiltshire fire, June 2018 201 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 18 ha Wiltshire fire, July 2018 457 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 17 ha Wiltshire fire, July 2022 327 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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 started707 ha reached on 2 Apr0.2 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Apr | 14.9 °C | 42 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 2 Apr | 16.0 °C | 41 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 3 Apr | 18.0 °C | 44 % | 47 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 4 Apr after | 20.9 °C | 38 % | 45 km/h | 1.6 mm | Low 6 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 11.0, a minimum humidity of 42% and 10 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2018: 18.
FWI at the start
11.0
Minimum humidity
42 %
Days without rain
10
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Wiltshire fire, April 2025
709 ha
3 days
FWI 11.0
Min. humidity 42 %
Wiltshire fire, July 2022
223 ha
3 days
FWI 13.3
Min. humidity 42 %
4 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.9 mm on 20 Jul.
Wiltshire fire, July 2022
178 ha
1 day
FWI 13.4
Min. humidity 42 %
3 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.9 mm on 20 Jul.
Wiltshire fire, June 2018
201 ha
1 day
FWI 13.4
Min. humidity 42 %
1 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Powys fire, April 2020
131 ha
2 days
FWI 12.1
Min. humidity 42 %
129 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 10.3 mm on 28 Apr.
Wiltshire fire, July 2022
327 ha
3 days
FWI 14.6
Min. humidity 40 %
2 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.2 mm on 20 Jul.
What happened to them
- 3 days
- median duration
- 225 ha
- median area
- 17 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 6.3 mm
- rain at the end (median; 15 of 18 had it)
It was 3.2 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 3 days, against 3 days.
Only 3 of its 18 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. 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 6.3 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
1.6 mmfirst rain
4 Aprthe day after it ended
56km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 3 Apr, and on 4 Apr 1.6 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 6.3 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 2018.
- 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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 25 Mar 2025
After · 10 Apr 2025
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 4 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
WHO 15
30 Mar1 Apr3 Apr5 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 · 3Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wiltshire fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 1 April 2025 and 3 April 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 709 hectares (7.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Wiltshire (707 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 18.0 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
- 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2018 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 18. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 225 ha; 17 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 3 of its 18 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. 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 6.3 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: 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3 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.
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.