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Chashka fire, 15 August 2024 Општина Чашка · Chashka, Dolneni

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2024, 11:41 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2024 in Chashka, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 6,884 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Vardar since 2016 (of 49 with a page). Number 5 in North Macedonia in 2024, of 69.

Burnt area
6,884ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
15 Aug 2024 – 21 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
15 Aug
2024
Heat detections
174
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Energy released
127MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Aug 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug21 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1516171819

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
36km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 29 Aug.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 101 ha in 2020, 121 ha in 2021, 1 ha in 2022, 79 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 238 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Chashka Општина Чашка 7,942 inhabitants · 11.3 km from the town where it started
    5,575 ha reached on 14 Aug
    6.8 %
  2. Dolneni Општина Долнени 13,126 inhabitants · 4.8 km from the town
    1,307 ha reached on 15 Aug
    3.2 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland44 %
  • Broadleaved forest37 %
  • Other natural land11 %
  • Agricultural areas7.7 %

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

Checked against the press

Checked on 29 September 2026

We checked this page against 2 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:

Also known as
пожар кај Мокрени (Чашка) · пожар кај Дебреште (Долнени) · пожар Ореше-Папрадиште

Sources

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)
14 Aug 33.3 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
15 Aug 33.2 °C 22 % 20 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
16 Aug 33.5 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Aug 32.1 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
18 Aug 28.0 °C 42 % 28 km/h 4.2 mm Very low 4
19 Aug 24.3 °C 47 % 30 km/h 4.2 mm Very low 3
20 Aug 23.1 °C 55 % 29 km/h 6.7 mm Very low 1
21 Aug 24.4 °C 46 % 25 km/h 4.7 mm Very low 1
22 Aug after 27.8 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
23 Aug after 29.3 °C 28 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
24 Aug after 30.6 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
25 Aug after 28.7 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
26 Aug after 27.4 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
27 Aug after 28.5 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Aug after 25.9 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
29 Aug after 26.2 °C 36 % 30 km/h 2.2 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2024
After · 28 Aug 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 14 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.97
131415161718192021222324
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 · 174Every 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 North Macedonia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chashka fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 August 2024 and 21 August 2024: 7 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 6,884 hectares (68.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chashka (5,575 ha, 6.8 %); Dolneni (1,307 ha, 3.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 4.8 km of Dolneni. 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 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of North Macedonia (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: 193 · 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 193 · 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 (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.