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Holo Prystan fire, 26 August 2023 Скадовський район · Holo Prystan

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2023, 09:56 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2023 in Holo Prystan, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 305 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 387th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1103 with a page). Number 143 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

Compare with…
Burnt area
305ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
26 Aug 2023 – 28 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
26 Aug
2023
Heat detections
20
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
176MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug28 Aug
28 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 2023 · 21 MW · 4 28 Aug 2023 · 332 MW · 16
27 Aug 28 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

35°high
25km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 29 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Holo Prystan Скадовський район 127,000 inhabitants · 9.9 km from the centre where it started
    304 ha reached on 27 Aug
    0.1 %

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 land74 %
  • Agricultural areas25 %
  • Mixed forest0.7 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
28 Aug 35.4 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
29 Aug after 35.1 °C 33 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Aug 2023
After · 4 Sept 2023

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 29 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.41
25 Aug27 Aug29 Aug31 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 · 20Every 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 Ukraine

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Holo Prystan fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2023 to 28 August 2023 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2023 to 28 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 305 hectares (3.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Holo Prystan (304 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Holo Prystan and came within 9.9 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 25 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 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.

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 101 · 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 August 2023 to 28 August 2023. 20 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 (Public Domain). 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.