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IL · Israel ·

Yizre'el fire, May 2025 Yizre'el

Out · last measured on 17 May 2025

The fire started on 17 May 2025 in Yizre'el, Israel, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 114 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 21th largest in Northern District since 2016 (of 28 with a page). Number 10 in Israel in 2025, of 10.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jerusalem · 2025Haifa · 2016Yizre'el · 2020Yizre'el · 2021

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks it up automatically when it is available.

Burnt area
114ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
17 May 2025 – 17 May 2025
Municipalities hit
1
subdistricts
Started on
17 May
2025
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

40°high
40km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Yizre'el where it started
    115 ha
    0.1 %

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

  • Agricultural areas57 %
  • Other natural land40 %
  • Coniferous forest1.8 %
  • Mixed forest0.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
17 May 40.5 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 May after 28.4 °C 44 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 May after 26.1 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 May after 24.9 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 May after 25.2 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 May after 27.1 °C 50 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 May after 28.0 °C 41 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 May after 28.6 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 May after 30.0 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 May after 35.8 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 May after 25.9 °C 53 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 57.5, a minimum humidity of 8% and 11 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 9.

FWI at the start 57.5
Minimum humidity 8 %
Days without rain 11
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Jerusalem fire, April 2025
434 ha 2 days FWI 51.2 Min. humidity 12 % 91 km away, in 2025

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 1 May.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 9. 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

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
40km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 17 May, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

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 · 10 May 2025
After · 24 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 17 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1052 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
15 May17 May19 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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Israel

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yizre'el fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 May 2025 and 17 May 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 114 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yizre'el (115 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Israel (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: 102 · 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
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 102.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.