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Kukës fire, October 2019 Kukës

Out · last detection 27 Oct 2019, 01:20 UTC

The fire started on 26 October 2019 in Kukës, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 110 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 19th largest in Kukës since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 28 in Albania in 2019, of 31.

The power measured by the satellite is low (1.2 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
110ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
26 Oct 2019 – 27 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
26 Oct
2019
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 1 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Energy released
2MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

27 Oct 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Oct27 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2627

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

The weather it burned in

16°high
23km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 3 Nov.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Kukës where it started
    110 ha reached on 26 Oct
    0.1 %

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 land100 %

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)
26 Oct 15.7 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
27 Oct 16.3 °C 20 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
28 Oct after 15.8 °C 25 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
29 Oct after 14.3 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
30 Oct after 10.4 °C 51 % 27 km/h 0.7 mm Low 6
31 Oct after 3.4 °C 83 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 4
1 Nov after 5.1 °C 67 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
2 Nov after 9.7 °C 59 % 42 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 5
3 Nov after 11.1 °C 67 % 94 km/h 1.7 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Oct 2019
After · 3 Nov 2019

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 24 October 2019 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
24252627282930
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 Albania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kukës fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 26 October 2019 and 27 October 2019: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 110 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kukës (110 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 16.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 11, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 128 · 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 128 · 112.

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 2.5 Generic). 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.