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HR · Croatia · –

Općina Hrvace fire, August 2024 Općina Hrvace

Out · last detection 18 Aug 2024, 12:01 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2024 in Općina Hrvace, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,778 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Split-Dalmatia since 2016 (of 48 with a page). The largest in Croatia in 2024, of 14.

Burnt area
2,778ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
16 Aug 2024 – 18 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Aug
2024
Heat detections
116
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
628MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug18 Aug
18 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

17 Aug 2024 · 1,062 MW · 79 18 Aug 2024 · 193 MW · 37
17 Aug 18 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
30km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.8 mm on 19 Aug.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,684 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Općina Hrvace where it started
    1,161 ha reached on 17 Aug
    5.4 %

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

  • Other natural land91 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland4.9 %
  • Broadleaved forest3.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

  • ZEPA + LIC Dinara HR1000028 · HR5000028

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)
16 Aug 29.8 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
17 Aug 28.4 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.9 mm High 30
18 Aug 25.6 °C 45 % 30 km/h 6.9 mm Moderate 15
19 Aug after 18.0 °C 80 % 33 km/h 15.8 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 29.2, a minimum humidity of 32% and 7 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 33.

FWI at the start 29.2
Minimum humidity 32 %
Days without rain 7
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Grad Vrlika fire, July 2017
303 ha 13 days FWI 30.6 Min. humidity 32 % 19 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

6 days
median duration
365 ha
median area
36 %
went past 1,000 ha
6.4 mm
rain at the end (median; 28 of 33 had it)

It was 7.6 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 3 days, against 6 days.

Only 4 of its 33 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 5 of 33, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 6.4 mm.

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

15.8 mmfirst rain
19 Augthe day after it ended
30km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 18 Aug, and on 19 Aug 15.8 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 28 of 33, with a median of 6.4 mm.

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 2016.
  • 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 · 9 Aug 2024
After · 25 Aug 2024

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 20 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1041 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
14 Aug16 Aug18 Aug20 Aug
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)

Detections table · 116Every 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 Croatia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Općina Hrvace fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 16 August 2024 and 18 August 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,778 hectares (27.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Općina Hrvace (1,161 ha, 5.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 33. Their median duration was 6 days and their median area 365 ha; 36 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 4 of its 33 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 5 of 33, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 6.4 mm.

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.

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 112 · 193.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 116 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.

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 (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.