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Grad Vrlika fire, 8 July 2017 Grad Vrlika, Općina Muć, Općina Hrvace

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2017, 02:09 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2017 in Grad Vrlika, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,488 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Split-Dalmatia since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 15 in Croatia in 2017, of 78.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Grad Vrlika · 2020Dinara · 2020Livno · 2017Grad Knin · 2026

Burnt area
1,488ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
17days
8 Jul 2017 – 24 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
8 Jul
2017
Heat detections
147
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
62MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul24 Jul
25 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Jul 2017 · 282 MW · 41 10 Jul 2017 · 43 MW · 10 11 Jul 2017 · 278 MW · 16 12 Jul 2017 · 31 MW · 6 13 Jul 2017 · 6 MW · 4 15 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1 16 Jul 2017 · 92 MW · 4 17 Jul 2017 · 126 MW · 17 18 Jul 2017 · 7 MW · 3 19 Jul 2017 · 11 MW · 7 20 Jul 2017 · 36 MW · 14 21 Jul 2017 · 23 MW · 10 22 Jul 2017 · 11 MW · 2 23 Jul 2017 · 34 MW · 6 24 Jul 2017 · 3 MW · 1 25 Jul 2017 · 10 MW · 5
9 Jul 12 Jul 16 Jul 19 Jul 22 Jul 25 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

29°high
78km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (15 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 Vrlika where it started
    739 ha reached on 9 Jul
    3.0 %
  2. Općina Muć
    409 ha reached on 12 Jul
    1.8 %
  3. Općina Hrvace
    340 ha reached on 10 Jul
    1.6 %

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 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland41 %
  • Broadleaved forest4.2 %
  • Agricultural areas0.7 %

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)
8 Jul 28.6 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
9 Jul 28.0 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
10 Jul 29.2 °C 32 % 60 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
11 Jul 28.1 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
12 Jul 27.8 °C 30 % 55 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
13 Jul 25.5 °C 37 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
14 Jul 24.8 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
15 Jul 22.6 °C 30 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Jul 19.1 °C 32 % 78 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Jul 22.0 °C 31 % 75 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Jul 25.5 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Jul 26.1 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
20 Jul 27.7 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Jul 28.9 °C 26 % 49 km/h 3.6 mm Low 9
22 Jul 28.4 °C 26 % 54 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
23 Jul 29.0 °C 27 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Jul 27.8 °C 28 % 67 km/h 11.6 mm Very low 4
25 Jul after 20.6 °C 45 % 49 km/h 4.4 mm Very low 1
26 Jul after 20.5 °C 34 % 49 km/h 0.4 mm Low 5
27 Jul after 21.1 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
28 Jul after 24.7 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
29 Jul after 27.2 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Jul after 27.4 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
31 Jul after 28.5 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Aug after 30.2 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
2 Aug after 33.0 °C 21 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Aug after 31.7 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Aug after 33.4 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2017
After · 31 Jul 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 24 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
678910111213141516171819202122232425262728
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 · 147Every 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 Vrlika fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 July 2017 to 24 July 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 July 2017 to 17 July 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,488 hectares (14.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Grad Vrlika (739 ha, 3.0 %); Općina Muć (409 ha, 1.8 %); Općina Hrvace (340 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.2 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 78 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.

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.

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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 July 2017 to 17 July 2017. 147 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.