Kozelets fire, September 2020 Козелецький район · Kozelets
The fire started on 10 September 2020 in Kozelets, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 196 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
This entry is probably an agricultural burn of stubble, meadow or peatland, not a wildfire. Before the war, stubble and meadows in Ukraine were burnt every spring and autumn, and the fire often got out of hand. This is our assumption, based on the time of year, ground with almost no woodland and the lack of news about this fire; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.
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.
- Burnt area
- 196ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 10 Sept 2020 – 11 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 10 Sept
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 11
- in a single hotspot: 3 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Energy released
- 5MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 17 Sept.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
195 ha reached on 5 Sept0.1 %
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
- Other natural land54 %
- Agricultural areas28 %
- Mixed forest18 %
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 | 27.0 °C | 37 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 11 Sept | 20.7 °C | 37 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 12 Sept after | 23.0 °C | 32 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 13 Sept after | 27.2 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 14 Sept after | 22.9 °C | 40 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 15 Sept after | 23.8 °C | 53 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 Sept after | 26.0 °C | 45 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 17 Sept after | 30.1 °C | 26 % | 57 km/h | 2.8 mm | Moderate 21 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 7 September 2020 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 11Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kozelets fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 10 September 2020 and 11 September 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 196 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kozelets (195 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 15.3 km of Kozelets. 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 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
- 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
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
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.