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HR · Croatia · –

Grad Vrlika fire, March 2025 Grad Vrlika, Općina Civljane

Out · last detection 10 Mar 2025, 00:11 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2025 in Grad Vrlika, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 545 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 22th largest in Split-Dalmatia since 2016 (of 48 with a page). The largest in Croatia in 2025, of 11.

The power measured by the satellite is low (4.0 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
545ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
9 Mar 2025 – 10 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
9 Mar
2025
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 4 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
13MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar10 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

10 Mar 2025 · 13 MW · 4

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

The weather it burned in

12°high
82km/h · peak gust
41%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 32.4 mm on 11 Mar.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 242 ha in 2016, 545 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 545 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.3% of the area of London (5.4 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
    493 ha reached on 10 Mar
    2.0 %
  2. 53 ha reached on 10 Mar
    0.6 %

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 land100 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

  • ZEPA + LIC Dinara HR1000028 · HR5000028

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

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)
9 Mar 11.9 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
10 Mar 8.2 °C 65 % 82 km/h 5.4 mm Very low 2
11 Mar after 9.0 °C 67 % 61 km/h 32.4 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 4.9, a minimum humidity of 41% and 7 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.

FWI at the start 4.9
Minimum humidity 41 %
Days without rain 7
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Prozor-Rama fire, March 2022
210 ha 5 days FWI 5.0 Min. humidity 41 % 90 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 9.9 mm on 30 Mar.

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
226 ha
median area
12 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.5 mm
rain at the end (median; 15 of 16 had it)

It was 2.4 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 2 days, against 3 days.

Only 2 of its 16 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 1 of 16, 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 2.5 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

32.4 mmfirst rain
11 Marthe day after it ended
82km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 10 Mar, and on 11 Mar 32.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 16, with a median of 2.5 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 · 2 Mar 2025
After · 17 Mar 2025

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 9 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1020 µg/m³
Optical depth0.29
7 Mar9 Mar11 Mar13 Mar
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 · 4Every 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?
Copernicus dates it between 9 March 2025 and 10 March 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 545 hectares (5.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Grad Vrlika (493 ha, 2.0 %); Općina Civljane (53 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 11.9 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 82 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 5, class Very low.
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: 16. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 226 ha; 12 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 2 of its 16 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 1 of 16, 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 2.5 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. 4 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.