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HU · Hungary ·

Hajmisknr fire, September 2020 Hajmisknr

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2020, 12:14 UTC

The fire started on 18 September 2020 in Hajmisknr, Hungary, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 141 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

The only fire in Hungary with a page in 2020.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.7 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
141ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
18 Sept 2020 – 18 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Sept
2020
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
19MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Sept18 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

18 Sept 2020 · 19 MW · 2

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

The weather it burned in

20°high
33km/h · peak gust
45%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.3 mm on 25 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. Hajmisknr where it started
    141 ha reached on 18 Sept
    3.7 %

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 land100 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
18 Sept 20.4 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
19 Sept after 20.8 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
20 Sept after 23.1 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
21 Sept after 24.8 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Sept after 25.8 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Sept after 24.0 °C 58 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 19
24 Sept after 24.6 °C 51 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Sept after 19.8 °C 77 % 47 km/h 23.3 mm Very low 1

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 8.7, a minimum humidity of 45% and 10 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2017: 6.

FWI at the start 8.7
Minimum humidity 45 %
Days without rain 10
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Fonysd fire, April 2019
246 ha 2 days FWI 18.3 Min. humidity 41 % 61 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.1 mm on 10 Apr.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 6. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

23.3 mmfirst rain
25 Sept7 days after it ended
33km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 18 Sept, and on 25 Sept 23.3 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 2017.
  • 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 · 11 Sept 2020
After · 25 Sept 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 2Every 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 Hungary

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Hajmisknr fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 18 September 2020 and 18 September 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 141 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hajmisknr (141 ha, 3.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 20.4 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 9, class Low.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Hungary (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 · 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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.