How long did the Budva Municipality fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2024 to 9 August 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 July 2024 to 2 August 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,085 hectares (30.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Budva Municipality (1,804 ha, 16 %); Bar Municipality (1,283 ha, 2.0 %); Cetinje Municipality (2 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Montenegro (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

ME · Montenegro · 2024-07-26 → 2024-08-09

Budva Municipality fire, July 2024 Budva Municipality, Bar Municipality, Cetinje Municipality

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2024, 11:10 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2024 in Budva Municipality, Montenegro, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,085 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

The largest in Montenegro in 2024, of 46.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.2 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: Budva Municipality · 2018 Bar Municipality · 2022 Bar Municipality · 2017 Danilovgrad Municipality · 2017

Burnt area: 3,085ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 15days; 26 Jul 2024 – 9 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 26 Jul; 2024
Heat detections: 163; in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 54MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul9 Aug

Play back 10 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 31 Jul 2 Aug 4 Aug 6 Aug 8 Aug 10 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

29km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.1 mm on 18 Aug.

This area had burned before

45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 991 ha in 2018, 386 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Budva Municipality where it started

1,804 ha reached on 29 Jul

16 %
Bar Municipality

1,283 ha reached on 29 Jul

2.0 %
Cetinje Municipality

2 ha

0.0 %

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

Scrub and transitional woodland41 %
Broadleaved forest37 %
Other natural land21 %
Agricultural areas0.8 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area0.42 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.42 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
26 Jul	24.6 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
27 Jul	26.9 °C	37 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
28 Jul	27.4 °C	47 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
29 Jul	28.8 °C	46 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
30 Jul	26.8 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
31 Jul	26.8 °C	29 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Aug	26.0 °C	43 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
2 Aug	26.4 °C	46 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
3 Aug	25.4 °C	48 %	20 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 16
4 Aug	25.9 °C	42 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
5 Aug	25.7 °C	43 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
6 Aug	25.9 °C	46 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
7 Aug	26.6 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
8 Aug	25.9 °C	55 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
9 Aug	27.4 °C	51 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
10 Aug after	27.8 °C	33 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
11 Aug after	28.5 °C	38 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
12 Aug after	28.9 °C	40 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Aug after	28.6 °C	52 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
14 Aug after	28.9 °C	49 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
15 Aug after	29.1 °C	47 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Aug after	28.7 °C	56 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
17 Aug after	26.9 °C	65 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
18 Aug after	24.0 °C	73 %	22 km/h	8.1 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jul 2024

After · 16 Aug 2024

Before After

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 3 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1025 µg/m³

Optical depth0.43

WHO 15

242526272829303112345

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 · 163Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Montenegro ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Budva Municipality fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2024 to 9 August 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 July 2024 to 2 August 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,085 hectares (30.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Budva Municipality (1,804 ha, 16 %); Bar Municipality (1,283 ha, 2.0 %); Cetinje Municipality (2 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Montenegro (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: 112 · 123 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 2 August 2024 → 9 August 2024.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 · 123.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 July 2024 to 2 August 2024. 163 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 ADM1 (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.

Where it burned