Općina Gračac fire, 5 August 2017 Općina Gračac, Grad Knin
The fire started on 5 August 2017 in Općina Gračac, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 4,086 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Zadar County since 2016 (of 55 with a page). Number 2 in Croatia in 2017, of 78.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,086ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 5 Aug 2017 – 11 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 5 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 283
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 316MW
- 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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 17.9 mm on 12 Aug.
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).
Zagreb 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
-
Općina Gračac where it started3,690 ha reached on 6 Aug3.8 %
-
391 ha reached on 8 Aug1.1 %
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 land40 %
- Broadleaved forest38 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
- Agricultural areas6.6 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 16 %
- LIC Poštak HR2001253
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Aug | 34.4 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 6 Aug | 31.9 °C | 39 % | 60 km/h | 2.5 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 7 Aug | 24.0 °C | 53 % | 79 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Aug | 30.3 °C | 29 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 9 Aug | 33.0 °C | 24 % | 48 km/h | 3.0 mm | High 26 |
| 10 Aug | 34.2 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 11 Aug | 26.6 °C | 35 % | 56 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 12 Aug after | 18.0 °C | 60 % | 68 km/h | 17.9 mm | Very low 0 |
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 6 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 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 · 283Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,225 haOpćina Gračac21 March 2022 · 7 days · 3 km away
- 4,959 haOpćina Gračac5 April 2020 · 9 days · 11 km away
- 3,528 haBihać20 March 2022 · 10 days · 19 km away
- 8,657 haBosansko GrahovoAugust 2026 · 12 days · 31 km away
- 3,936 haOpćina Gračac22 March 2022 · 8 days · 33 km away
- 8,212 haBosansko Grahovo6 April 2020 · 8 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Općina Gračac fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 August 2017 to 11 August 2017 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 August 2017 to 10 August 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 4,086 hectares (40.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Općina Gračac (3,690 ha, 3.8 %); Grad Knin (391 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 79 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Croatia (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: 112 · 193 · 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 5 August 2017 to 10 August 2017. 283 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-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.