Mogila fire, 12 August 2026 Општина Могила · Mogila, Novatsi
The fire started on 12 August 2026 in Mogila, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,968 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Pelagonia since 2016 (of 76 with a page). Number 3 in North Macedonia in 2026, of 40.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,968ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 9days
- 12 Aug 2026 – 20 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 12 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 28
- in a single hotspot: 36 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 60MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 29 Aug.
This area had burned before
45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 725 ha in 2019, 177 ha in 2021, 242 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 881 ha that had burned before.
- 483 ha Prilep fire, September 2019 2,771 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 242 ha Mogila fire, March 2024 242 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 155 ha Mogila fire, February 2021 155 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 133 ha Novatsi fire, March 2019 138 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 109 ha Novatsi fire, August 2019 1,471 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,294 ha reached on 13 Aug5.1 %
-
676 ha reached on 13 Aug0.9 %
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
- Agricultural areas64 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland26 %
- Broadleaved forest10 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Aug | 33.4 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Aug | 30.9 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Aug | 27.6 °C | 50 % | 26 km/h | 6.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 15 Aug | 28.3 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 16 Aug | 30.3 °C | 27 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Aug | 32.1 °C | 30 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Aug | 30.7 °C | 36 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 19 Aug | 31.2 °C | 35 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Aug | 33.5 °C | 35 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 21 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 33 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Aug after | 34.4 °C | 30 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 23 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 39 % | 28 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 24 Aug after | 33.7 °C | 36 % | 29 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 24 |
| 25 Aug after | 34.4 °C | 26 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 26 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 35 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 27 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 28 Aug after | 34.9 °C | 31 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 29 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 41 % | 32 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 13 |
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 15 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 32 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 · 28Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,752 haPrilep Општина ПрилепAugust 2026 · 11 days · 9 km away
- 2,771 haPrilep Општина Прилеп7 September 2019 · 7 days · 9 km away
- 11,224 haMariovo Општина НовациAugust 2024 · 8 days · 13 km away
- 10,265 haMariovo Општина ПрилепSeptember 2024 · 7 days · 18 km away
- 1,584 haPrilep Општина Прилеп23 August 2017 · 6 days · 31 km away
- 2,582 haPrilep Општина ПрилепJuly 2025 · 14 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mogila fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (12 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 20 August 2026 (9 days from 12 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,968 hectares (19.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mogila (1,294 ha, 5.1 %); Novatsi (676 ha, 0.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 10.7 km of the centre of Novatsi, 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 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of North Macedonia (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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 28 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.
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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.