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Kharkiv fire, 10 September 2024 Харківський район · Kharkiv

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2024, 11:30 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2024 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,256 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 5th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 33 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kharkiv · 2024Kharkiv · 2024Chuhuiv · 2024Vovchansk · 2024

Burnt area
2,256ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
10 Sept 2024 – 14 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Sept
2024
Heat detections
5
in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
15MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept14 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2024 · 15 MW · 5

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
50km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (23 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. Kharkiv Харківський район 178,602 inhabitants · 19.8 km from the centre where it started
    2,254 ha reached on 10 Sept
    1.8 %

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 areas83 %
  • Mixed forest11 %
  • Other natural land5.2 %

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)
10 Sept 25.9 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Sept 27.9 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
12 Sept 29.7 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Sept 28.8 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
14 Sept 28.4 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
15 Sept after 27.6 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
16 Sept after 26.8 °C 22 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
17 Sept after 26.1 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
18 Sept after 22.7 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Sept after 22.9 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Sept after 25.1 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Sept after 23.7 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept after 24.8 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Sept after 23.3 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept after 24.1 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2024
After · 21 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 11 September 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
PM1057 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
891011121314151617
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 · 5Every 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 Kharkiv fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 10 September 2024 and 14 September 2024: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,256 hectares (22.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kharkiv (2,254 ha, 1.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kharkiv and came within 19.8 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 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5 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.