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RS · Serbia ·

Kovacica Municipality fire, 24 September 2018 Ковачица · Kovacica Municipality, Zrenjanin City

Out · last detection 24 Sept 2018, 00:42 UTC

The fire started on 24 September 2018 in Kovacica Municipality, Serbia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 176 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Južnobanatski upravni okrug since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 10 in Serbia in 2018, of 17.

The power measured by the satellite is low (3.3 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: Kucevo Municipality · 2019Kucevo Municipality · 2019Kovacica Municipality · 2018Zrenjanin City · 2022

Burnt area
176ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
24 Sept 2018 – 24 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
24 Sept
2018
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 3 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
4MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Sept24 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

24 Sept 2018 · 4 MW · 2

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

The weather it burned in

19°high
52km/h · peak gust
68%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 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. Kovacica Municipality Ковачица 21,178 inhabitants · 10.5 km from the centre where it started
    176 ha reached on 24 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Zrenjanin City Zrenjanin 67,129 inhabitants · 21.8 km from the centre
    0 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

  • Other natural land66 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %
  • Broadleaved forest4.0 %

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)

Started with Strong wind: 8.9 % of the area in Serbia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
24 Sept 19.3 °C 68 % 52 km/h 5.0 mm Very low 5
25 Sept after 15.5 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 5
26 Sept after 17.3 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
27 Sept after 19.7 °C 20 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
28 Sept after 24.1 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Sept after 21.8 °C 37 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Sept after 18.3 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Oct after 21.5 °C 41 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Oct after 14.0 °C 62 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 13
3 Oct after 20.0 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
4 Oct after 20.2 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 5.1, a minimum humidity of 68% and 17 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 8.

FWI at the start 5.1
Minimum humidity 68 %
Days without rain 17
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Kucevo Municipality fire, March 2019
810 ha 6 days FWI 5.5 Min. humidity 61 % 118 km away, in 2019

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

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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
52km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 24 Sept, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

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 · 17 Sept 2018
After · 1 Oct 2018

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 23 September 2018 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1043 µg/m³
22 Sept24 Sept26 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 · 2Every 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 Serbia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kovacica Municipality fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 September 2018 and 24 September 2018: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 176 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kovacica Municipality (176 ha, 0.4 %); Zrenjanin City (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kovacica Municipality and came within 10.5 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 19.3 °C, humidity dropped to 68 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 5, class Very low.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Serbia (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 · 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 With cross-checks and a citable version

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. 2 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.