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HR · Croatia · –

Grad Šibenik fire, 16 August 2017 Grad Šibenik, Grad Vodice

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2017, 11:23 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2017 in Grad Šibenik, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 664 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 18th largest in Šibenik-Knin since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 31 in Croatia in 2017, of 78.

Burnt area
664ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
16 Aug 2017 – 17 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
16 Aug
2017
Heat detections
23
in a single hotspot: 133 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
332MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug17 Aug
17 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 2017 · 639 MW · 19 17 Aug 2017 · 26 MW · 4
16 Aug 17 Aug

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
32km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (6.6 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. Grad Šibenik where it started
    602 ha reached on 16 Aug
    1.5 %
  2. 64 ha reached on 16 Aug
    0.7 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Other natural land54 %
  • Agricultural areas42 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub2.4 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland1.7 %

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)
16 Aug 32.5 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Aug 33.7 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Aug after 33.2 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Aug after 33.0 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Aug after 29.7 °C 41 % 49 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 42
21 Aug after 29.3 °C 27 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Aug after 28.0 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Aug after 28.7 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Aug after 30.3 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Aug after 31.6 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Aug after 32.7 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Aug after 32.1 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 29.0, a minimum humidity of 37% and 3 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 17.

FWI at the start 29.0
Minimum humidity 37 %
Days without rain 3
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Grad Drniš fire, June 2017
854 ha 1 day FWI 27.0 Min. humidity 35 % 24 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.7 mm on 1 Jul.

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
551 ha
median area
29 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.6 mm
rain at the end (median; 14 of 17 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (664 ha against a median of 551 ha) and lasted 2 days, against 3 days.

In 3 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.6 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
32km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 17 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 14 of 17, with a median of 2.6 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Aug 2017
After · 24 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 19 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1022 µg/m³
14 Aug16 Aug18 Aug20 Aug
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 · 23Every 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 Šibenik fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 16 August 2017 and 17 August 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 664 hectares (6.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Grad Šibenik (602 ha, 1.5 %); Grad Vodice (64 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 17. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 551 ha; 29 % went past 1,000 ha. In 3 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.6 mm.

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 · 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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 23 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology

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.