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Bilozerka fire, October 2023 Білозерський район · Bilozerka, Beryslav, Oleshky

Out · last measured on 2 Oct 2023

The fire started on 1 October 2023 in Bilozerka, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 324 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 358th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1103 with a page). Number 128 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

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
324ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
1 Oct 2023 – 2 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
1 Oct
2023
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

28°high
48km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 8 Oct.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 35 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Bilozerka Білозерський район 64,790 inhabitants · 70.1 km from the town where it started
    184 ha reached on 1 Oct
    0.1 %
  2. Beryslav
    92 ha reached on 1 Oct
    0.1 %
  3. Oleshky Олешківський район 70,367 inhabitants · 23.7 km from the town
    48 ha reached on 1 Oct
    0.0 %

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

  • Agricultural areas50 %
  • Other natural land43 %
  • Artificial surfaces6.5 %

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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
1 Oct 28.0 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Oct 21.9 °C 33 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Oct after 21.0 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Oct after 23.1 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Oct after 22.5 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Oct after 22.1 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.9 mm High 26
7 Oct after 21.3 °C 38 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Oct after 18.4 °C 54 % 46 km/h 6.6 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Sept 2023
After · 9 Oct 2023

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 1 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
293012345
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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bilozerka fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 1 October 2023 and 2 October 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 324 hectares (3.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bilozerka (184 ha, 0.1 %); Beryslav (92 ha, 0.1 %); Oleshky (48 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 23.7 km of Oleshky. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
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

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 101 · 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 (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.