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UA · Ukraine ·

Kalanchak fire, 20 September 2024 Каланчацький район · Kalanchak

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2024, 11:42 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2024 in Kalanchak, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 375 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 296th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1102 with a page). Number 446 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Burnt area
375ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
20 Sept 2024 – 20 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Sept
2024
Heat detections
29
in a single hotspot: 248 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
2.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept20 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

20 Sept 2024 · 2,543 MW · 29

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

The weather it burned in

25°high
44km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone one day 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Kalanchak Каланчацький район 21,135 inhabitants · 20.5 km from the centre where it started
    376 ha reached on 20 Sept
    0.4 %

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

  • Agricultural areas94 %
  • Other natural land5.9 %

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)

Started with Extreme FWI: 28 % of the area in Ukraine

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
20 Sept 24.8 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
21 Sept after 26.1 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Sept after 27.0 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Sept after 28.0 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Sept after 26.0 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Sept after 25.4 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Sept after 25.2 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept after 26.7 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Sept after 27.9 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Sept after 25.7 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Sept after 25.1 °C 50 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 59.0, a minimum humidity of 19% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2022: 37.

FWI at the start 59.0
Minimum humidity 19 %
Days without rain 1
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Novovorontsovka fire, August 2025
190 ha 1 day FWI 55.5 Min. humidity 19 % 118 km away, in 2025

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

2 days
median duration
177 ha
median area
0 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.9 mm
rain at the end (median; 28 of 37 had it)

It was 2.1 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 1 day, against 2 days.

Only 8 of its 37 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 9 of 37, 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 1.9 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
44km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 20 Sept, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 28 of 37, with a median of 1.9 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 2022.
  • 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 · 13 Sept 2024
After · 27 Sept 2024

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 18 September 2024 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
PM1033 µg/m³
Optical depth0.47
18 Sept20 Sept22 Sept
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 · 29Every 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 Kalanchak fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 20 September 2024 and 20 September 2024: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 375 hectares (3.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kalanchak (376 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kalanchak and came within 20.5 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 24.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2022 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 37. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 177 ha; 0 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 8 of its 37 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 9 of 37, 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 1.9 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: 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 29 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.