Zugdidi fire, March 2025 Zugdidi, Gali
The fire started on 11 March 2025 in Zugdidi, Georgia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 707 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 8th largest in Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti since 2016 (of 25 with a page). Number 16 in Georgia in 2025, of 53.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 707ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 11 Mar 2025 – 13 Mar 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 11 Mar
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 21
- in a single hotspot: 220 MW
- Danger at start
- 3
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 365MW
- 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. Rain came after the fire: 16.1 mm on 18 Mar.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 502 ha in 2016, 289 ha in 2017, 411 ha in 2020, 397 ha in 2021, 141 ha in 2022, 423 ha in 2023, 85 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 707 ha that had burned before.
- 502 ha Zugdidi fire, January 2016 1,082 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 423 ha Zugdidi fire, January 2023 525 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 411 ha Zugdidi fire, March 2020 2,785 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 383 ha Zugdidi fire, January 2021 496 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 141 ha Gali fire, March 2022 399 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 77 ha Zugdidi fire, March 2017 532 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 22 ha Gali fire, January 2017 520 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 14 ha Gali fire, January 2021 3,097 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
-
Zugdidi where it started667 ha1.0 %
-
40 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Mar | 19.8 °C | 46 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 12 Mar | 23.3 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 13 Mar | 25.1 °C | 32 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 14 Mar after | 24.8 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 15 Mar after | 24.4 °C | 30 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 16 Mar after | 27.0 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 17 Mar after | 23.9 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 18 Mar after | 17.9 °C | 57 % | 35 km/h | 16.1 mm | Very low 0 |
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 15 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 35 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 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 · 21Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Zugdidi fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 March 2025 and 13 March 2025: 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 707 hectares (7.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Zugdidi (667 ha, 1.0 %); Gali (40 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, class Low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Georgia (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: 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.
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. 21 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.
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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.