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TR · Türkiye ·

Bayat fire, October 2020 Bayat

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2020, 10:00 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2020 in Bayat, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 119 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Çorum since 2016 (of 17 with a page). Number 179 in Türkiye in 2020, of 212.

The power measured by the satellite is low (3.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Alaca · 2024Yıldızeli · 2023Bayat · 2018Bayat · 2026

Burnt area
119ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
11 Oct 2020 – 11 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Oct
2020
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 4 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
4MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct11 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2020 · 4 MW · 1

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

27°high
23km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 18 Oct.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 112 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Bayat 16,525 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the centre where it started
    119 ha reached on 11 Oct
    0.2 %

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

  • Other natural land54 %
  • Agricultural areas46 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
11 Oct 27.0 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Oct after 28.4 °C 23 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
13 Oct after 28.4 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Oct after 29.0 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Oct after 26.6 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Oct after 26.8 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Oct after 27.2 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Oct after 22.5 °C 27 % 37 km/h 1.8 mm High 34

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 29.8, a minimum humidity of 27% and 15 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 23.

FWI at the start 29.8
Minimum humidity 27 %
Days without rain 15
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Alaca fire, August 2024
247 ha 1 day FWI 32.4 Min. humidity 27 % 69 km away, in 2024

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

1 day
median duration
221 ha
median area
9 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.5 mm
rain at the end (median; 15 of 23 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 119 ha against a median of 221 ha. It lasted 1 day, against 1 day.

In 8 of 23, 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 2.5 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

1.8 mmfirst rain
18 Oct7 days after it ended
23km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 11 Oct, and on 18 Oct 1.8 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 23, with a median of 2.5 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.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 4 Oct 2020
After · 18 Oct 2020

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 9 October 2020 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1044 µg/m³
9 Oct11 Oct13 Oct
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)

Detections table · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Türkiye

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bayat fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 11 October 2020 and 11 October 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 119 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bayat (119 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bayat and came within 4.2 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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: 23. Their median duration was 1 day and their median area 221 ha; 9 % went past 1,000 ha. In 8 of 23, 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 2.5 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: 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.

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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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 2020, 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 (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.