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Borova fire, 31 August 2024 Борівський район · Borova

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2024, 11:18 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2024 in Borova, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 121 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 423th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 1680 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Borova · 2022Kupiansk · 2024Kupiansk · 2024Lyman · 2025

Burnt area
121ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
31 Aug 2024 – 1 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Aug
2024
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 41 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
50MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug1 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2024 · 50 MW · 3

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
49km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Borova Борівський район 7.4 km from the centre where it started
    121 ha reached on 31 Aug
    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

  • Other natural land50 %
  • Agricultural areas47 %
  • Mixed forest3.3 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
31 Aug 33.6 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Sept 30.8 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Sept after 31.1 °C 21 % 61 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 67
3 Sept after 27.4 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 55
4 Sept after 29.5 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Sept after 28.2 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Sept after 26.0 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Sept after 25.7 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Sept after 26.3 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept after 26.8 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 52
10 Sept after 25.9 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.7 mm High 31
11 Sept after 28.4 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2024
After · 8 Sept 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 4 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10167 µg/m³
Optical depth0.61
2930311234
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 · 3Every 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 Borova fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 August 2024 and 1 September 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 121 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Borova (121 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Borova and came within 7.4 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 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3 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 2025, 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 (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.