How long did the Panagyurishte fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2022 and 8 August 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 834 hectares (8.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Panagyurishte (833 ha, 1.5 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Panagyurishte and came within 10.1 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 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

BG · Bulgaria · 2022-08-08 → 2022-08-08

Panagyurishte fire, August 2022 Панагюрище · Panagyurishte

Out · last measured on 8 Aug 2022

The fire started on 8 August 2022 in Panagyurishte, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 834 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 2 in Bulgaria in 2022, of 41.

Compare with…

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We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area: 834ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 8 Aug 2022 – 8 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 8 Aug; 2022
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index

The weather it burned in

30°high

53km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.6 mm on 10 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.5% of the area of London (8.3 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

Panagyurishte Панагюрище 20,690 inhabitants · 10.1 km from the centre where it started

833 ha

1.5 %

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 areas51 %
Coniferous forest21 %
Other natural land17 %
Mixed forest8.2 %
Broadleaved forest1.9 %
Scrub and transitional woodland0.7 %

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)
8 Aug	30.2 °C	21 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Aug after	30.4 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Aug after	26.7 °C	36 %	38 km/h	10.6 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Aug 2022

After · 15 Aug 2022

Before After

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 10 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1017 µg/m³

Optical depth0.42

67891011

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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Panagyurishte fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2022 and 8 August 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 834 hectares (8.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Panagyurishte (833 ha, 1.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Panagyurishte and came within 10.1 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 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

ГДПБЗН · Пожарна безопасност и защита на населението ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 (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.

Where it burned