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Berat fire, July 2022 Berat

Out · last measured on 2 Aug 2022

The fire started on 30 July 2022 in Berat, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 322 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in Berat since 2016 (of 16 with a page). Number 14 in Albania in 2022, of 50.

We have the Copernicus 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
322ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
30 Jul 2022 – 2 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Jul
2022
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

35°high
49km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 8 Aug.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 72 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Berat where it started
    322 ha
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Mixed forest52 %
  • Agricultural areas17 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland13 %
  • Other natural land11 %
  • Coniferous forest6.5 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.2 %

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

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)
30 Jul 34.6 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Jul 31.4 °C 45 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
1 Aug 32.4 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Aug 32.9 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Aug after 32.5 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
4 Aug after 32.8 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Aug after 33.2 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Aug after 34.1 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Aug after 33.9 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Aug after 32.8 °C 30 % 31 km/h 1.1 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jul 2022
After · 9 Aug 2022

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 31 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.23
2829303112345
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 Albania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Berat fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2022 and 2 August 2022: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 322 hectares (3.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Berat (322 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 128 · 112

Satellite cross-check

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 128 · 112.

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic). 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.