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Karbintsi fire, July 2024 Општина Карбинци · Karbintsi, Probishtip, Shtip

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2024, 12:38 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2024 in Karbintsi, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,674 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in East since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 10 in North Macedonia in 2024, of 69.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Karbintsi · 2019Karbintsi · 2016Cheshinovo - Obleshevo · 2016Sveti Nikole · 2024

Burnt area
2,674ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
29 Jul 2024 – 31 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
29 Jul
2024
Heat detections
95
in a single hotspot: 112 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
551MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2024

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 2024 · 371 MW · 18 30 Jul 2024 · 1,081 MW · 54 31 Jul 2024 · 202 MW · 23
29 Jul 30 Jul 31 Jul

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
47km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 357 ha in 2016, 481 ha in 2019, 9 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. Karbintsi Општина Карбинци 3,420 inhabitants · 2.4 km from the town where it started
    1,713 ha reached on 29 Jul
    7.4 %
  2. Probishtip Општина Пробиштип 13,417 inhabitants · 12.3 km from the town
    482 ha reached on 29 Jul
    1.5 %
  3. Shtip Општина Штип 44,866 inhabitants · 12.4 km from the town
    415 ha reached on 29 Jul
    0.7 %
  4. Cheshinovo - Obleshevo Општина Чешиново-Облешево 5,471 inhabitants · 5.5 km from the town
    68 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Agricultural areas53 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland43 %
  • Broadleaved forest3.8 %

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)
29 Jul 34.6 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Jul 30.9 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
31 Jul 31.1 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Aug after 32.8 °C 14 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Aug after 35.3 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Aug after 32.9 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Aug after 30.5 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
5 Aug after 30.4 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Aug after 30.4 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Aug after 31.5 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Aug after 34.2 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Aug after 32.2 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Aug after 33.5 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jul 2024
After · 7 Aug 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 1 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1021 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
2728293031123
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 · 95Every 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 North Macedonia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Karbintsi fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2024 and 31 July 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,674 hectares (26.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Karbintsi (1,713 ha, 7.4 %); Probishtip (482 ha, 1.5 %); Shtip (415 ha, 0.7 %); Cheshinovo - Obleshevo (68 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.4 km of Karbintsi. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of North Macedonia (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: 193 · 112

Satellite cross-check

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 193 · 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. 95 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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.