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UA · Ukraine ·

Kupiansk fire, 1 September 2024 Куп'янський район · Kupiansk, Dvorichna

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2024, 10:59 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2024 in Kupiansk, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 113 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 471th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 1819 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dovzhansk · 2024Antratsyt · 2024Dvorichna · 2024Dvorichna · 2024

Burnt area
113ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
1 Sept 2024 – 1 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2024
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
34MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept1 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2024 · 34 MW · 4

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
48km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 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. Kupiansk Куп'янський район 137,200 inhabitants · 14.7 km from the centre where it started
    110 ha
    0.1 %
  2. Dvorichna Дворічанський район 9.5 km from the centre
    3 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

  • Mixed forest73 %
  • Other natural land13 %
  • Agricultural areas11 %
  • Artificial surfaces2.6 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.38 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
1 Sept 30.9 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Sept after 31.0 °C 21 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
3 Sept after 28.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 56
4 Sept after 29.9 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Sept after 28.2 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Sept after 26.2 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Sept after 26.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Sept after 26.7 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Sept after 27.1 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 50
10 Sept after 26.4 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40
11 Sept after 28.5 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 34

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 58.0, a minimum humidity of 19% and 18 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2020: 7.

FWI at the start 58.0
Minimum humidity 19 %
Days without rain 18
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Dovzhansk fire, September 2024
2,045 ha 2 days FWI 55.6 Min. humidity 20 % 239 km away, in 2024

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: 7. 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
48km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 1 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 2020.
  • 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 · 25 Aug 2024
After · 8 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 4 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10150 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
30 Aug1 Sept3 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 · 0Every 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 Kupiansk fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 1 September 2024 and 1 September 2024: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 113 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kupiansk (110 ha, 0.1 %); Dvorichna (3 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 9.5 km of the centre of Dvorichna, 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 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 7 September 2024 → 1 September 2024.
  2. Start date: 29 August 2024 → 1 September 2024.

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 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. No 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.