Burned area
satellite only5,398ha
Union of 2 GWIS (Copernicus) perimeters: overlapping areas count once.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 25 Mar 2023 – 3 Apr 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
CN · China · –
Yongji County fire, 25 March 2023 永吉县 · Yongji County, Panshi City, Shuangyang District
Out · last measured on 3 Apr 2023
The fire started on 25 March 2023 in Yongji County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,398 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 18th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 9 in China in 2023, of 241.
Use this data
Compare with…
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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 only10days
25 Mar 2023 to 3 Apr 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 25 Mar 2023 – 3 Apr 2023
+− 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 only25 Mar 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 25 Mar 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Danger at the start
model5.1FWI · very low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 2.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 25 Mar 2023, 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
model23.0°C · 18% RH
High of 23.0 °C and minimum humidity of 18% on 2 April 2023; gusts of 47 km/h on 29 March 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 25 Mar 2023 – 3 Apr 2023
- 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.
Living inside
model≈ 4,500people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 51 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
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 GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
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
- 5,398 ha
- Dates
- 25 Mar 2023 – 3 Apr 2023
- Name
- Yongji County
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/yongji-county-2023-03?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 yongji-county-2023-03.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-03-25 | 0 | 0 | 5.7 | -6.8 | 25 | 10.8 | 25.6 | 0 | 5.1 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2023-03-26 | 0 | 0 | 5.8 | -6.4 | 30 | 10.7 | 30.2 | 0 | 6.5 | bajo | 1 |
| 2023-03-27 | 0 | 0 | 11.8 | -4.9 | 17 | 11.9 | 29.5 | 0 | 10.2 | bajo | 1 |
| 2023-03-28 | 0 | 0 | 14.2 | -2.8 | 19 | 17.5 | 43.2 | 0 | 13.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-03-29 | 0 | 0 | 17.2 | 1.2 | 31 | 20.9 | 46.8 | 0 | 16.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-03-30 | 0 | 0 | 17.1 | 3 | 30 | 17.7 | 31 | 0 | 10.1 | bajo | 1 |
| 2023-03-31 | 0 | 0 | 22.6 | 1.7 | 19 | 14.5 | 34.6 | 0 | 15.9 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-04-01 | 0 | 0 | 22.5 | 8 | 19 | 18.9 | 42.8 | 0 | 19.9 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-04-02 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 6.3 | 18 | 17.1 | 41 | 0 | 21.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-04-03 | 0 | 0 | 21.2 | 7.4 | 19 | 18.4 | 45 | 0 | 27.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-04-04 | 0 | 0 | 9.6 | 4.3 | 22 | 18 | 42.1 | 0 | 23.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-04-05 | 0 | 0 | 12.6 | 4.2 | 33 | 15.8 | 34.9 | 0.1 | 15.7 | moderado | 0 |
| 2023-04-06 | 0 | 0 | 9.7 | 0.8 | 27 | 18.4 | 35.6 | 0 | 14.1 | moderado | 0 |
| 2023-04-07 | 0 | 0 | 6.3 | -0.6 | 14 | 28.7 | 61.9 | 0 | 25.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-04-08 | 0 | 0 | 10.8 | -1.7 | 19 | 18 | 42.5 | 0 | 19.9 | moderado | 0 |
| 2023-04-09 | 0 | 0 | 20.4 | 2.6 | 24 | 28.4 | 62.6 | 0 | 34.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-04-10 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 9.4 | 42 | 33.7 | 78.5 | 1.1 | 38 | alto | 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: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 5,398ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 25 Mar 2023 – 3 Apr 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- counties
- Started on
- 25 Mar
- 2023
- Danger at start
- 5
- Very low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
23°high
47km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 10 Apr.
This area had burned before
20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 146 ha in 2017, 901 ha in 2020, 37 ha in 2022.
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
-
4,019 ha1.4 %
-
Panshi City 磐石市1,339 ha0.4 %
-
41 ha0.0 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area51 ha
Residents≈ 4,500
Inside the perimeter there were about 51 hectares of built-up land and about 4,500 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Mar | 5.7 °C | 25 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 26 Mar | 5.8 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 27 Mar | 11.8 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 28 Mar | 14.2 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 29 Mar | 17.2 °C | 31 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 30 Mar | 17.1 °C | 30 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 31 Mar | 22.6 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 1 Apr | 22.5 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 2 Apr | 23.0 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 3 Apr | 21.2 °C | 19 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 4 Apr after | 9.6 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 5 Apr after | 12.6 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 6 Apr after | 9.7 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 7 Apr after | 6.3 °C | 14 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Apr after | 10.8 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 9 Apr after | 20.4 °C | 24 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Apr after | 19.0 °C | 42 % | 78 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 38 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 5.1, a minimum humidity of 25% and 2 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.
FWI at the start
5.1
Minimum humidity
25 %
Days without rain
2
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Yongji County fire, 25 March 2023
5,398 ha
10 days
FWI 5.1
Min. humidity 25 %
Chuanying District fire, March 2025
1,034 ha
8 days
FWI 5.0
Min. humidity 27 %
45 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 6.4 mm on 25 Mar.
Liuhe County fire, April 2022
1,084 ha
6 days
FWI 4.4
Min. humidity 24 %
117 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 21 Apr.
Gongzhuling City fire, March 2017
1,135 ha
5 days
FWI 5.5
Min. humidity 25 %
128 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.4 mm on 18 Mar.
Yushu City fire, March 2025
2,084 ha
8 days
FWI 6.5
Min. humidity 25 %
156 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.0 mm on 25 Mar.
Yitong Manchu Autonomous County fire, March 2024
1,058 ha
3 days
FWI 7.2
Min. humidity 27 %
50 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.8 mm on 12 Apr.
What happened to them
- 7 days
- median duration
- 1,164 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 2.2 mm
- rain at the end (median; 15 of 16 had it)
It was 4.6 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 10 days, against 7 days.
None of its 16 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 1 of 16, 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 2.2 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
1.1 mmfirst rain
10 Apr7 days after it ended
47km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 3 Apr, and on 10 Apr 1.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 16, with a median of 2.2 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 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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 18 Mar 2023
After · 10 Apr 2023
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 5 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 104 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 91: 6.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak104 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10150 µg/m³
Optical depth0.95
WHO 15
23 Mar26 Mar29 Mar1 Apr4 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)
Other fires nearby
- 5,963 haShuangyang District 双阳区6 March 2026 · 12 days · 18 km away
- 6,275 haYongji County 永吉县14 March 2026 · 14 days · 21 km away
- 2,712 haShuangyang District 双阳区26 March 2023 · 8 days · 21 km away
- 7,715 haShuangyang District 双阳区9 March 2026 · 24 days · 23 km away
- 5,463 haShuangyang District 双阳区13 November 2025 · 11 days · 33 km away
- 4,367 haShuangyang District 双阳区25 March 2023 · 5 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Yongji County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 March 2023 and 3 April 2023: 10 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 5,398 hectares (54.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Yongji County (4,019 ha, 1.4 %); Panshi City (1,339 ha, 0.4 %); Shuangyang District (41 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 23.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
- 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 16. Their median duration was 7 days and their median area 1,164 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. None of its 16 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 1 of 16, 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 2.2 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: 119 · 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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- 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.
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.