Yilan County fire, 24 October 2026 依兰县 · Huanan County, Yilan County
The fire started on 24 October 2026 in Yilan County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,249 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 101th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1915 with a page). Number 79 in China in 2026, of 1094.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,249ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 24 Oct 2026 – 31 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 24 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 96
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 136MW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 570 ha in 2016, 93 ha in 2017, 1,266 ha in 2023, 1,324 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,932 ha that had burned before.
- 1,025 ha Huanan County fire, April 2023 1,115 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 743 ha Huanan County fire, October 2025 1,041 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha Huanan County fire, April 2023 1,091 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).
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
-
Huanan County 桦南县7,201 ha reached on 25 Oct1.6 %
-
57 ha reached on 24 Oct0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Oct | 12.6 °C | 29 % | 58 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 10 |
| 25 Oct | 9.9 °C | 24 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 26 Oct | 8.8 °C | 32 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 27 Oct | 2.8 °C | 33 % | 58 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very low 5 |
| 28 Oct | 2.2 °C | 22 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 29 Oct | 4.8 °C | 32 % | 19 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 5 |
| 30 Oct | 8.8 °C | 42 % | 49 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 8 |
| 31 Oct | -1.0 °C | 27 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 1 Nov after | -2.8 °C | 25 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 2 Nov after | -0.5 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
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 29 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 57 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 2.9 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 · 96Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 22,367 haYilan County 依兰县21 October 2025 · 15 days · 18 km away
- 8,301 haYilan County 依兰县19 April 2021 · 4 days · 23 km away
- 31,966 haYilan County 依兰县22 March 2026 · 13 days · 25 km away
- 5,871 haHuanan County 桦南县 27 October 2026 · 5 days · 26 km away
- 6,340 haYilan County 依兰县19 April 2021 · 4 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Yilan County fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 October 2026 to 31 October 2026 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 October 2026 to 31 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,249 hectares (72.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Huanan County (7,201 ha, 1.6 %); Yilan County (57 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Yilan County fire still active?
- No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 05:16 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 12.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
- 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 1 November 2026.
- Name: Huanan County → Yilan County.
- Page published (7,249 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 October 2026 to 31 October 2026. 96 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.