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Dedoplis Tskaro fire, 21 July 2024 Dedoplis Tskaro

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2024, 10:06 UTC

The fire started on 21 July 2024 in Dedoplis Tskaro, Georgia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 503 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 87th largest in Kakheti since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 5 in Georgia in 2024, of 22.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.4 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…
Burnt area
503ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
21 Jul 2024 – 23 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
21 Jul
2024
Heat detections
15
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
52MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jul23 Jul
23 Jul 2024

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jul 2024 · 42 MW · 5 23 Jul 2024 · 61 MW · 10
21 Jul 23 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
23km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 24 Jul.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 80 ha in 2016, 295 ha in 2018, 248 ha in 2019, 145 ha in 2020, 82 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 478 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.3% of the area of London (5 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

  1. Dedoplis Tskaro where it started
    504 ha
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

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)
21 Jul 27.5 °C 55 % 21 km/h 8.7 mm Very low 1
22 Jul 30.0 °C 47 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Low 6
23 Jul 32.8 °C 37 % 18 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 12
24 Jul after 31.4 °C 36 % 31 km/h 6.5 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jul 2024
After · 30 Jul 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 19 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10103 µg/m³
Optical depth0.76
1920212223242526
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 · 15Every 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 Georgia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dedoplis Tskaro fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 July 2024 and 23 July 2024: 3 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 503 hectares (5.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dedoplis Tskaro (504 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Georgia (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

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
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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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 15 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 comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 from each country’s official figure.