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Kato Polemidia fire, May 2024 Κάτω Πολεμιδίων · Kato Polemidia, Palodeia, Ypsonas

Out · last measured on 1 Jun 2024

The fire started on 31 May 2024 in Kato Polemidia, Cyprus, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 444 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Limassol since 2016 (of 15 with a page). Number 2 in Cyprus in 2024, of 7.

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We have the Copernicus 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
444ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
31 May 2024 – 1 Jun 2024
Municipalities hit
5
municipalities
Started on
31 May
2024
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

28°high
41km/h · peak gust
46%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days 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. Kato Polemidia Κάτω Πολεμιδίων where it started
    379 ha
    21 %
  2. Palodeia Παλώδια 1,568 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the centre
    41 ha
    4.6 %
  3. Ypsonas Ύψωνας
    14 ha
    0.4 %
  4. Pano Polemidia Πάνω Πολεμίδια 3,470 inhabitants · 1.4 km from the centre
    9 ha
    2.6 %
  5. Lemesos Λεμεσός
    2 ha
    0.0 %

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

  • Sclerophyllous scrub97 %
  • Other land cover2.2 %
  • Agricultural areas0.7 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

Official record

According to Τμήμα Δασών, this fire started on 31 May 2024 and burned 411 ha (the satellite measured 444 ha).

Τμήμα Δασών (Departamento de Bosques de Chipre), catálogo de incendios forestales. This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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)
31 May 26.7 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Jun 28.2 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Jun after 31.2 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
3 Jun after 34.2 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Jun after 35.5 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Jun after 35.7 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Jun after 36.1 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Jun after 35.8 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Jun after 35.3 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.8 mm High 32
9 Jun after 31.0 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 30
10 Jun after 31.5 °C 47 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Jun after 32.6 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 May 2024
After · 8 Jun 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 2 June 2024 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.23
2930311234
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Cyprus ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kato Polemidia fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 May 2024 and 1 June 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 444 hectares (4.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Kato Polemidia (379 ha, 21 %); Palodeia (41 ha, 4.6 %); Ypsonas (14 ha, 0.4 %); Pano Polemidia (9 ha, 2.6 %); Lemesos (2 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 1.4 km of the centre of Pano Polemidia, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 28.2 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cyprus (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 · 1407 · 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 112 · 1407.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with Τμήμα Δασών: 411 official ha against 444 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported). 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.