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Novovorontsovka fire, 2 October 2023 Нововоронцовський район · Novovorontsovka

Out · last measured on 2 Oct 2023

The fire started on 2 October 2023 in Novovorontsovka, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 196 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 610th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1102 with a page). Number 231 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Holo Prystan · 2026Oleshky · 2023Novovorontsovka · 2024Verkhniy Rohackyk · 2026

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
196ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
2 Oct 2023 – 2 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
2 Oct
2023
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

20°high
45km/h · peak gust
43%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.6 mm on 8 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Novovorontsovka Нововоронцовський район 20,373 inhabitants · 12.4 km from the centre where it started
    196 ha
    0.2 %

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 areas66 %
  • Other natural land22 %
  • Mixed forest11 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.5 %

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 area0.26 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.26 hectares of 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)
2 Oct 20.0 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Oct after 19.2 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Oct after 22.1 °C 40 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
5 Oct after 20.8 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
6 Oct after 20.1 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Oct after 20.4 °C 38 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Oct after 17.4 °C 56 % 43 km/h 10.6 mm Very low 2

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 26.8, a minimum humidity of 43% and 16 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2023: 9.

FWI at the start 26.8
Minimum humidity 43 %
Days without rain 16
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Holo Prystan fire, July 2026
108 ha 1 day FWI 26.0 Min. humidity 38 % 169 km away, in 2026

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 4 Jul.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 9. 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

10.6 mmfirst rain
8 Oct6 days after it ended
45km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 2 Oct, and on 8 Oct 10.6 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 2023.
  • 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 Sept 2023
After · 9 Oct 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 4 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1041 µg/m³
Optical depth0.38
30 Sept2 Oct4 Oct
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Novovorontsovka fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 2 October 2023 and 2 October 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 196 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Novovorontsovka (196 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Novovorontsovka and came within 12.4 km of its centre. 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 20.0 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 29 September 2023 → 2 October 2023.

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.