Bar Municipality fire, 17 August 2017 Bar Municipality, Ulcinj Municipality
The fire started on 17 August 2017 in Bar Municipality, Montenegro, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,853 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
Number 3 in Montenegro in 2017, of 75.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,853ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 16days
- 17 Aug 2017 – 1 Sept 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 17 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 372
- in a single hotspot: 125 MW
- Danger at start
- 16
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 144MW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 2 Sept.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Bar Municipality where it started2,533 ha reached on 17 Aug4.0 %
-
320 ha reached on 26 Aug1.3 %
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
- Broadleaved forest73 %
- Other natural land13 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland12 %
- Mixed forest1.4 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.
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 Aug | 25.2 °C | 41 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 18 Aug | 24.9 °C | 42 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 19 Aug | 23.3 °C | 56 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 20 Aug | 23.2 °C | 50 % | 19 km/h | 1.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 21 Aug | 22.2 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 22 Aug | 20.6 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 23 Aug | 20.7 °C | 28 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 24 Aug | 22.3 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 25 Aug | 23.5 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 26 Aug | 23.5 °C | 41 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 27 Aug | 22.7 °C | 54 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 28 Aug | 23.8 °C | 48 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 29 Aug | 22.3 °C | 43 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 30 Aug | 22.2 °C | 35 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 31 Aug | 20.1 °C | 57 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 1 Sept | 21.0 °C | 40 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 2 Sept after | 21.4 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 2.1 mm | Low 5 |
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.
Detections table · 372Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,277 haBar Municipality5 August 2017 · 13 days · 10 km away
- 1,201 haBudva MunicipalityAugust 2018 · 6 days · 31 km away
- 4,051 haLezhë24 July 2024 · 11 days · 33 km away
- 3,375 haShkodër29 July 2020 · 7 days · 34 km away
- 1,452 haPodgorica Municipality11 August 2024 · 4 days · 34 km away
- 3,085 haBudva MunicipalityJuly 2024 · 15 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bar Municipality fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 August 2017 to 1 September 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2017 to 25 August 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,853 hectares (28.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bar Municipality (2,533 ha, 4.0 %); Ulcinj Municipality (320 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.2 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Montenegro (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 · 123 · 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 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 25 August 2017 → 1 September 2017.
- Start date: 20 August 2017 → 17 August 2017.
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: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 August 2017 to 25 August 2017. 372 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 ADM1 (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 slightly from each country’s official figure.