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Diorios fire, May 2020 Διόριος · Diorios, Kalo Chorio Kapouti, Asomatos Keryneias

Out · last measured on 18 May 2020

The fire started on 17 May 2020 in Diorios, Cyprus, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,072 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

The largest in Cyprus in 2020, of 8.

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,072ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
17 May 2020 – 18 May 2020
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
17 May
2020
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

38°high
53km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 129 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Diorios Διόριος 501 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the town where it started
    390 ha
    10 %
  2. Kalo Chorio Kapouti
    273 ha
    9.6 %
  3. Asomatos Keryneias Ασώματος/Οζχάν 527 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the town
    226 ha
    10 %
  4. Karpaseia Καρπάσια/Κάρπασα 245 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the town
    186 ha
    27 %

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 woodland48 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub38 %
  • Other natural land11 %
  • Agricultural areas2.7 %

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)
17 May 36.6 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 May 37.9 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 May after 37.7 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 May after 37.1 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 May after 34.3 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 May after 24.7 °C 53 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 May after 24.5 °C 35 % 64 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
24 May after 22.6 °C 25 % 66 km/h 0.6 mm High 33
25 May after 27.0 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 May after 25.5 °C 36 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 May after 24.2 °C 53 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 May after 21.6 °C 48 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 May 2020
After · 25 May 2020

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 17 May 2020 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1063 µg/m³
15161718192021
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Cyprus ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Diorios fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 May 2020 and 18 May 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,072 hectares (10.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Diorios (390 ha, 10 %); Kalo Chorio Kapouti (273 ha, 9.6 %); Asomatos Keryneias (226 ha, 10 %); Karpaseia (186 ha, 27 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.5 km of Karpaseia. 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 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cyprus (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 · 1407

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 112 · 1407.

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-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported). 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.