Ohrid fire, 6 August 2024 Општина Охрид · Ohrid, Resen
The fire started on 6 August 2024 in Ohrid, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,598 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 7th largest in Southwest since 2016 (of 62 with a page). Number 11 in North Macedonia in 2024, of 69.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ohrid · 2021Kuçovë · 2024Resen · 2025Kuçovë · 2025
- Burnt area
- 1,598ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 12days
- 6 Aug 2024 – 17 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 6 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 232
- in a single hotspot: 128 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 176MW
- 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 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 18 Aug.
This area had burned before
16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 253 ha in 2021.
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
-
1,086 ha reached on 6 Aug2.8 %
-
402 ha reached on 12 Aug0.7 %
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
- Other natural land78 %
- Broadleaved forest13 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland9.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Aug | 20.7 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 7 Aug | 21.0 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 8 Aug | 22.0 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 9 Aug | 21.4 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 10 Aug | 20.7 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 11 Aug | 21.4 °C | 27 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 12 Aug | 23.0 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 13 Aug | 23.9 °C | 20 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Aug | 24.6 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 15 Aug | 24.8 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 16 Aug | 25.5 °C | 17 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 17 Aug | 23.7 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 18 Aug after | 20.5 °C | 40 % | 42 km/h | 1.3 mm | Moderate 15 |
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 16 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily 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 · 232Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 311 haOhrid Општина ОхридAugust 2021 · 6 days · 2 km away
- 2,869 haKuçovëAugust 2024 · 12 days · 5 km away
- 589 haResen Општина РесенJuly 2025 · 11 days · 15 km away
- 262 haKuçovë13 March 2025 · 2 days · 33 km away
- 481 haDevollJuly 2025 · 3 days · 37 km away
- 1,111 haDebartsa Општина ДебарцаJuly 2024 · 10 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ohrid fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 August 2024 to 17 August 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 August 2024 to 10 August 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,598 hectares (16.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ohrid (1,086 ha, 2.8 %); Resen (402 ha, 0.7 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Ohrid and came within 18.8 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 22.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 August 2024 to 10 August 2024. 232 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.