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Ora fire, July 2017 Ορά · Ora

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2017, 22:44 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2017 in Ora, Cyprus, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 117 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 3 in Cyprus in 2017, of 3.

The power measured by the satellite is low (1.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
117ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
19 Jul 2017 – 19 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
19 Jul
2017
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 1 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
1MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul19 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

19

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
44km/h · peak gust
45%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Ora Ορά 206 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the town where it started
    118 ha reached on 19 Jul
    7.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Coniferous forest67 %
  • Agricultural areas27 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub5.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

Official record

According to Τμήμα Δασών, this fire started on 19 July 2017 and burned 159 ha (the satellite measured 117 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Τμήμα Δασών (Departamento de Bosques de Chipre), catálogo de incendios forestales. This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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)
19 Jul 27.4 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Jul after 25.5 °C 63 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Jul after 25.9 °C 65 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
22 Jul after 26.0 °C 68 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Jul after 26.9 °C 68 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
24 Jul after 27.7 °C 65 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
25 Jul after 29.2 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Jul after 28.7 °C 50 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Jul after 29.3 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Jul after 27.2 °C 51 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Jul after 26.0 °C 59 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 12 Jul 2017
After · 26 Jul 2017

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 17 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1030 µg/m³
171819202122
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 · 1Every 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 Cyprus ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ora fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 19 July 2017 and 19 July 2017: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 117 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ora (118 ha, 7.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.9 km of Ora. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cyprus (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 · 1407

Satellite cross-check

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 · 1407.

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 3.0 Unported). 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.