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AZ · Azerbaijan · –

Kalbajar District fire, 8 September 2017 Kalbajar District, Dashkasan District

Out · last measured on 13 Sept 2017

The fire started on 8 September 2017 in Kalbajar District, Azerbaijan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 808 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 135th largest in Contiguous Azerbaijan since 2016 (of 278 with a page). Number 21 in Azerbaijan in 2017, of 36.

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
808ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
8 Sept 2017 – 13 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
8 Sept
2017
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

23°high
29km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 16 Sept.

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 0.5% of the area of London (8.1 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. Kalbajar District where it started
    768 ha
    0.3 %
  2. 43 ha
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
8 Sept 18.5 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
9 Sept 21.7 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
10 Sept 23.0 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
11 Sept 18.9 °C 58 % 29 km/h 0.4 mm Low 10
12 Sept 19.8 °C 54 % 25 km/h 1.3 mm Very low 4
13 Sept 23.3 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
14 Sept after 21.9 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Low 11
15 Sept after 22.0 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
16 Sept after 20.5 °C 50 % 28 km/h 1.9 mm Very low 3

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 9.8, a minimum humidity of 50% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 32.

FWI at the start 9.8
Minimum humidity 50 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Zangilan District fire, July 2018
1,047 ha 4 days FWI 10.7 Min. humidity 49 % 130 km away, in 2018

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

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
492 ha
median area
22 %
went past 1,000 ha
3.4 mm
rain at the end (median; 28 of 32 had it)

It was 1.6 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 6 days, against 3 days.

Only 11 of its 32 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 4 of 32, 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 3.4 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

1.9 mmfirst rain
16 Sept3 days after it ended
29km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 13 Sept, and on 16 Sept 1.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 28 of 32, with a median of 3.4 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 · 1 Sept 2017
After · 20 Sept 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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Azerbaijan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kalbajar District fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 September 2017 and 13 September 2017: 6 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 808 hectares (8.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kalbajar District (768 ha, 0.3 %); Dashkasan District (43 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.3 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Azerbaijan (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: 32. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 492 ha; 22 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 11 of its 32 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 4 of 32, 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 3.4 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 · 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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2015, 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 comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 3.0 Unported). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.