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UA · Ukraine · –

Bilopillia fire, 27 September 2024 Білопільський район · Bilopillia

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2024, 09:56 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2024 in Bilopillia, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 101 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 124th largest in Sumy Oblast since 2016 (of 129 with a page). Number 2045 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
101ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
27 Sept 2024 – 1 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Sept
2024
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start
63
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
12MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept1 Oct
1 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2024 · 9 MW · 2 1 Oct 2024 · 16 MW · 2
27 Sept 1 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
56km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 5 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Bilopillia Білопільський район 49,977 inhabitants · 29.0 km from the centre where it started
    101 ha reached on 27 Sept
    0.1 %

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

  • Mixed forest60 %
  • Agricultural areas27 %
  • Other natural land13 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)

Started with Extreme FWI: 28 % of the area in Ukraine Strong wind: 20 % of the area in Ukraine

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
27 Sept 24.4 °C 43 % 56 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 63
28 Sept 28.2 °C 32 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
29 Sept 23.8 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Sept 19.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Oct 23.5 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
2 Oct after 24.0 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
3 Oct after 24.6 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Oct after 21.3 °C 49 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Oct after 19.6 °C 71 % 31 km/h 3.5 mm Moderate 14

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 62.8, a minimum humidity of 43% and 44 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2020: 1.

FWI at the start 62.8
Minimum humidity 43 %
Days without rain 44
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Putyvl fire, September 2024
1,335 ha 5 days FWI 63.3 Min. humidity 32 % 38 km away, in 2024

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

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

3.5 mmfirst rain
5 Oct4 days after it ended
56km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 1 Oct, and on 5 Oct 3.5 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 2020.
  • 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 · 20 Sept 2024
After · 8 Oct 2024

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 29 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1061 µg/m³
Optical depth0.26
25 Sept27 Sept29 Sept1 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 · 4Every 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 Ukraine

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bilopillia fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2024 to 1 October 2024 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2024 to 28 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 101 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bilopillia (101 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bilopillia and came within 29.0 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 28.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 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.

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 101 · 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 September 2024 to 28 September 2024. 4 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.

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 (Public Domain). 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.