Burned area
satellite only3,327ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 26 January 2022
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
RO · Romania · –
C.A. Rosetti fire, 21 January 2020 C.A. Rosetti, Chilia Veche, Sulina
Out · last detection 24 Jan 2020, 00:09 UTC
The fire started on 21 January 2020 in C.A. Rosetti, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,327 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
This record is fire in the reed beds of the Danube Delta, not a forest fire. Thousands of hectares of reed burn in the delta every year, mostly between January and April, and many of these burns are deliberate. That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.
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Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only4days
21 Jan 2020 to 24 Jan 2020: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 24 Jan 2020, 00:09 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only21 Jan 2020
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 21 Jan 2020
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only48
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 105 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 21 Jan 2020 – 24 Jan 2020
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only482MW
Total radiative power on 21 January 2020; hotspots that day: 19.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 21 Jan 2020
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model3.0FWI · very low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 15.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 21 Jan 2020, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model9.5°C · 45% RH
High of 9.5 °C and minimum humidity of 45% on 22 January 2020; gusts of 60 km/h on 23 January 2020.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 21 Jan 2020 – 24 Jan 2020
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 3,327 ha
- Dates
- 21 Jan 2020 – 24 Jan 2020
- Name
- C.A. Rosetti
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/c-a-rosetti-tulcea-2020-01?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire c-a-rosetti-tulcea-2020-01.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-21 | 19 | 482 | 5.3 | 0.2 | 60 | 19.1 | 35.6 | 0 | 3 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2020-01-22 | 11 | 28 | 9.5 | -0.6 | 45 | 21.8 | 36 | 0 | 5.3 | bajo | 1 |
| 2020-01-23 | 15 | 54 | 5.6 | 0.1 | 46 | 34.3 | 60.5 | 0 | 10.6 | bajo | 1 |
| 2020-01-24 | 3 | 3 | 6.7 | -3.3 | 43 | 17.6 | 31.7 | 0 | 5.4 | bajo | 1 |
| 2020-01-25 | 0 | 0 | 8.8 | -2.6 | 39 | 18.6 | 28.1 | 0 | 4.5 | muy_bajo | 0 |
| 2020-01-26 | 0 | 0 | 7.6 | -2.7 | 53 | 9.9 | 20.5 | 0 | 4 | muy_bajo | 0 |
| 2020-01-27 | 0 | 0 | 8.9 | -1.2 | 76 | 10.4 | 18 | 0.9 | 2.7 | muy_bajo | 0 |
| 2020-01-28 | 0 | 0 | 6.4 | 3 | 92 | 13.3 | 24.5 | 0.5 | 0.7 | muy_bajo | 0 |
| 2020-01-29 | 0 | 0 | 9.4 | 2.3 | 76 | 24.1 | 40 | 3.1 | 1.8 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 3,327ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 21 Jan 2020 – 24 Jan 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Jan
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 48
- in a single hotspot: 105 MW
- Danger at start
- 3
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 142MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
21 Jan24 Jan
24 Jan 2020
How it evolved, day by day
21 Jan
22 Jan
23 Jan
24 Jan
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
10°high
60km/h · peak gust
43%lowest humidity
It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 29 Jan.
This area had burned before
84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 608 ha in 2016, 2,561 ha in 2017, 1,147 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,805 ha that had burned before.
- 2,520 ha C.A. Rosetti fire, January 2017 3,207 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 730 ha C.A. Rosetti fire, February 2019 1,235 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 535 ha C.A. Rosetti fire, February 2016 734 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 305 ha C.A. Rosetti fire, March 2019 540 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 88 ha Sulina fire, March 2019 957 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 73 ha C.A. Rosetti fire, February 2016 372 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Bucharest boundary: geoBoundaries · World Bank (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
2,959 ha reached on 21 Jan11 %
-
Chilia Veche 1,728 inhabitants · 13.6 km from the centre363 ha reached on 23 Jan0.7 %
-
Sulina 3,118 inhabitants · 15.5 km from the centre2 ha0.0 %
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
- Other natural land100 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
- LIC Delta Dunării ROSCI0065
- ZEPA Delta Dunării și Complexul Razim - Sinoie ROSPA0031
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jan | 5.3 °C | 60 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 22 Jan | 9.5 °C | 45 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 23 Jan | 5.6 °C | 46 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 24 Jan | 6.7 °C | 43 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 25 Jan after | 8.8 °C | 39 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 26 Jan after | 7.6 °C | 53 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 27 Jan after | 8.9 °C | 76 % | 18 km/h | 0.9 mm | Very low 3 |
| 28 Jan after | 6.4 °C | 92 % | 24 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very low 1 |
| 29 Jan after | 9.4 °C | 76 % | 40 km/h | 3.1 mm | Very low 2 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 3.0, a minimum humidity of 60% and 15 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2019: 11.
FWI at the start
3.0
Minimum humidity
60 %
Days without rain
15
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · C.A. Rosetti fire, 21 January 2020
3,327 ha
4 days
FWI 3.0
Min. humidity 60 %
Isaccea fire, February 2022
228 ha
2 days
FWI 4.5
Min. humidity 59 %
74 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.5 mm on 20 Feb.
Reni fire, March 2023
204 ha
2 days
FWI 1.6
Min. humidity 61 %
68 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.6 mm on 10 Mar.
Holo Prystan fire, August 2022
2,154 ha
9 days
FWI 5.8
Min. humidity 61 %
243 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.0 mm on 12 Aug.
Biliaivka fire, January 2022
745 ha
1 day
FWI 1.2
Min. humidity 53 %
139 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.0 mm on 17 Jan.
Blăgești fire, February 2022
111 ha
1 day
FWI 7.0
Min. humidity 54 %
146 km away, in 2022
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: 11. 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
3.1 mmfirst rain
29 Jan5 days after it ended
60km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 24 Jan, and on 29 Jan 3.1 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 2019.
- 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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 14 Jan 2020
After · 31 Jan 2020
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · CopernicusOn 26 January 2020 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak50 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1054 µg/m³
WHO 15
19 Jan21 Jan23 Jan25 Jan27 Jan
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 · 48Every 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
- 7,692 haSulina20 March 2022 · 9 days · 5 km away
- 6,700 haChilia Veche31 March 2022 · 4 days · 12 km away
- 7,618 haSulina14 February 2025 · 7 days · 16 km away
- 6,252 haKiliia Кілійський район24 March 2022 · 9 days · 20 km away
- 6,060 haSfântu GheorgheJanuary 2022 · 4 days · 27 km away
- 10,843 haSfântu GheorgheJanuary 2025 · 5 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the C.A. Rosetti fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 21 January 2020 and 24 January 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,327 hectares (33.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: C.A. Rosetti (2,959 ha, 11 %); Chilia Veche (363 ha, 0.7 %); Sulina (2 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in C.A. Rosetti and came within 2.2 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 9.5 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 11, class Low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Romania (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 · 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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 48 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.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.