Novovorontsovka fire, 20 July 2024 Нововоронцовський район · Verkhniy Rohackyk, Novovorontsovka
The fire started on 20 July 2024 in Novovorontsovka, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,190 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 72th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1103 with a page). Number 94 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.
The power measured by the satellite is low (16.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,190ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 20 Jul 2024 – 23 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 17
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 30MW
- 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 0 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.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Kyiv boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
689 ha reached on 20 Jul0.8 %
-
Novovorontsovka Нововоронцовський район 20,373 inhabitants · 24.0 km from the centre where it started502 ha reached on 20 Jul0.4 %
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 areas72 %
- Other natural land27 %
- Mixed forest1.2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jul | 30.9 °C | 40 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 21 Jul | 31.6 °C | 36 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Jul | 29.4 °C | 50 % | 29 km/h | 8.9 mm | Very low 4 |
| 23 Jul | 29.4 °C | 49 % | 32 km/h | 3.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 24 Jul after | 29.0 °C | 42 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 25 Jul after | 27.6 °C | 38 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 26 Jul after | 29.7 °C | 36 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 27 Jul after | 30.4 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 28 Jul after | 34.1 °C | 26 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Jul after | 30.5 °C | 40 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Jul after | 25.5 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 31 Jul after | 27.2 °C | 39 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 1 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 31 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 40 % | 29 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 30 |
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 25 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 13 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 · 17Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,047 haVerkhniy Rohackyk Верхньорогачицький район19 July 2026 · 1 day · 1 km away
- 2,136 haVerkhniy Rohackyk Верхньорогачицький районJune 2025 · 2 days · 3 km away
- 1,184 haNovovorontsovka Нововоронцовський район5 July 2024 · 15 days · 28 km away
- 2,148 haBeryslav20 June 2026 · 18 days · 40 km away
- 1,292 haHornostaivka Горностаївський район22 July 2026 · 41 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Novovorontsovka fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 July 2024 to 23 July 2024 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 July 2024 to 22 July 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,190 hectares (11.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Verkhniy Rohackyk (689 ha, 0.8 %); Novovorontsovka (502 ha, 0.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 16.0 km of the centre of Verkhniy Rohackyk, 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 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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.
- Last day with fire: 22 July 2024 → 23 July 2024.
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 July 2024 to 22 July 2024. 17 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.
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.