Drohobych fire, February 2024 Дрогобицький район · Drohobych
The fire started on 27 February 2024 in Drohobych, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 394 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 12th largest in Lviv Oblast since 2016 (of 105 with a page). Number 418 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.
The power measured by the satellite is low (19.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 394ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 27 Feb 2024 – 29 Feb 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 7
- in a single hotspot: 20 MW
- Danger at start
- 1
- Very low · FWI index
- Energy released
- 54MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 3 Mar.
This area had burned before
66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 197 ha in 2021, 63 ha in 2022, 23 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 259 ha that had burned before.
- 171 ha Drohobych fire, October 2021 254 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 42 ha Drohobych fire, March 2022 318 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 26 ha Drohobych fire, October 2021 452 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8 ha Drohobych fire, March 2022 263 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
395 ha reached on 27 Feb0.2 %
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
- Other natural land58 %
- Mixed forest32 %
- Agricultural areas9.2 %
- Broadleaved forest1.3 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Feb | 17.3 °C | 51 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 28 Feb | 16.7 °C | 46 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 29 Feb | 15.2 °C | 56 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 1 Mar after | 9.4 °C | 73 % | 40 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 2 |
| 2 Mar after | 10.7 °C | 66 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 3 Mar after | 9.9 °C | 72 % | 29 km/h | 1.8 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 29 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 7Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,006 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район29 January 2025 · 5 days · 1 km away
- 452 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район20 October 2021 · 4 days · 3 km away
- 530 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район22 February 2025 · 3 days · 5 km away
- 698 haDrohobych Дрогобицький район28 January 2025 · 3 days · 7 km away
- 1,146 haSambir Самбірський районMarch 2020 · 6 days · 10 km away
- 865 haSambir Самбірський район14 March 2026 · 1 day · 10 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Drohobych fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 27 February 2024 and 29 February 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 394 hectares (3.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Drohobych (395 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 22.5 km of Drohobych. 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 17.3 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 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
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 (Public Domain). 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.