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Ludwigslust-Parchim fire, June 2023 Ludwigslust-Parchim

Out · last detection 13 Jun 2023, 12:04 UTC

The fire started on 12 June 2023 in Ludwigslust-Parchim, Germany, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 103 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 2 in Germany in 2023, of 3.

Compare with…
Burnt area
103ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
12 Jun 2023 – 13 Jun 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
12 Jun
2023
Heat detections
15
in a single hotspot: 112 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
150MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jun13 Jun
13 Jun 2023

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jun 2023 · 185 MW · 2 13 Jun 2023 · 114 MW · 13
12 Jun 13 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
40km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.8 mm on 16 Jun.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 66 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Ludwigslust-Parchim where it started
    103 ha reached on 12 Jun
    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

  • Coniferous forest100 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
12 Jun 26.7 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Jun 24.8 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Jun after 24.5 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Jun after 23.3 °C 36 % 43 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 39
16 Jun after 20.2 °C 65 % 39 km/h 13.8 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 44.1, a minimum humidity of 21% and 3 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 5.

FWI at the start 44.1
Minimum humidity 21 %
Days without rain 3
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Potsdam-Mittelmark fire, August 2018
224 ha 5 days FWI 44.5 Min. humidity 22 % 183 km away, in 2018

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.8 mm on 30 Aug.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 5. 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

13.8 mmfirst rain
16 Jun3 days after it ended
40km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 13 Jun, and on 16 Jun 13.8 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 · 5 Jun 2023
After · 20 Jun 2023

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 14 June 2023 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.52
10 Jun12 Jun14 Jun16 Jun
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 · 15Every 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 Germany

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ludwigslust-Parchim fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 June 2023 and 13 June 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 103 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ludwigslust-Parchim (103 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Germany (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: 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.

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 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. 15 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 ADM3 (Data license Germany - Attribution - Version 2.0). 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.