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Mostar fire, July 2021 Mostar

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2021, 01:26 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2021 in Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 590 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 110th largest in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2016 (of 520 with a page). Number 19 in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2021, of 86.

Burnt area
590ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
30 Jul 2021 – 2 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Jul
2021
Heat detections
16
in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
250MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Aug 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul2 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

3012

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
70km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 28.5 mm on 5 Aug.

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 136 ha in 2018, 102 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Mostar where it started
    589 ha reached on 30 Jul
    0.6 %

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 land53 %
  • Agricultural areas33 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub8.7 %
  • Artificial surfaces3.2 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland2.2 %

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)
30 Jul 38.1 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Jul 38.7 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 49
1 Aug 38.0 °C 25 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Aug 35.5 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Aug after 33.9 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Aug after 35.6 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug after 31.4 °C 28 % 58 km/h 28.5 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jul 2021
After · 9 Aug 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 16Every 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 Bosnia & Herzegovina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mostar fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2021 and 2 August 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 590 hectares (5.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mostar (589 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bosnia & Herzegovina (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: 123 · 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 123 · 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 ADM3 (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.