Yilan County fire, October 2026 依兰县 · Yilan County
The fire started on 26 October 2026 in Yilan County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,435 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1066th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1854 with a page). Number 616 in China in 2026, of 999.
The power measured by the satellite is low (10.7 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
- 1,435ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 26 Oct 2026 – 28 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 26 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 30
- in a single hotspot: 11 MW
- Danger at start
- 15
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 72MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 196 ha in 2016, 272 ha in 2017, 840 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 904 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,435 ha reached on 26 Oct0.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Oct | 9.3 °C | 29 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 27 Oct | 3.6 °C | 30 % | 62 km/h | 0.7 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 28 Oct | 1.3 °C | 23 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 29 Oct after | 4.5 °C | 34 % | 16 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 6 |
| 30 Oct after | 10.8 °C | 36 % | 53 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 11 |
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 25 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 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)
Detections table · 30Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,340 haYilan County 依兰县19 April 2021 · 4 days · 11 km away
- 5,473 haYilan County 依兰县28 October 2017 · 7 days · 11 km away
- 22,367 haYilan County 依兰县21 October 2025 · 15 days · 12 km away
- 31,966 haYilan County 依兰县22 March 2026 · 13 days · 24 km away
- 8,301 haYilan County 依兰县19 April 2021 · 4 days · 24 km away
- 5,113 haHuanan County 桦南县14 March 2026 · 15 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Yilan County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 October 2026 and 28 October 2026: 3 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,435 hectares (14.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Yilan County (1,435 ha, 0.3 %).
- Is the Yilan County fire still active?
- No fire detections since 28 Oct 2026, 05:08 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 9.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 29 October 2026.
- Page published (1,435 ha).
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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 30 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.