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Grad Benkovac fire, 20 August 2017 Grad Benkovac

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2017, 01:07 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2017 in Grad Benkovac, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,876 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 5th largest in Zadar County since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 3 in Croatia in 2017, of 78.

Burnt area
3,876ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
20 Aug 2017 – 24 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
20 Aug
2017
Heat detections
226
in a single hotspot: 117 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Aug 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug24 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

21222324

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
60km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 1 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Grad Benkovac where it started
    3,874 ha reached on 21 Aug
    5.9 %

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 land76 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland5.1 %
  • Artificial surfaces1.7 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.9 %

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)
20 Aug 26.4 °C 43 % 60 km/h 1.8 mm High 29
21 Aug 27.1 °C 27 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Aug 27.4 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Aug 28.1 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Aug 30.2 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Aug after 32.5 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Aug after 34.7 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Aug after 34.0 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Aug after 34.0 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 56
29 Aug after 30.6 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
30 Aug after 29.2 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Aug after 29.7 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Sept after 28.3 °C 40 % 35 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Aug 2017
After · 31 Aug 2017

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 26 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1021 µg/m³
18192021222324252627
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 · 226Every 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 Croatia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Grad Benkovac fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 20 August 2017 and 24 August 2017: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,876 hectares (38.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Grad Benkovac (3,874 ha, 5.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Croatia (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 · 193

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 · 193.

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 2.0). 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.