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Patnos fire, September 2021 Panos · Patnos

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2021, 10:37 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2021 in Patnos, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 182 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Ağrı since 2016 (of 33 with a page). Number 98 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Patnos · 2019Patnos · 2017Patnos · 2025Patnos · 2026

Burnt area
182ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
5 Sept 2021 – 10 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
5 Sept
2021
Heat detections
9
in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
162MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept10 Sept
10 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 2021 · 319 MW · 8 10 Sept 2021 · 5 MW · 1
8 Sept 10 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
30km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 73 ha in 2017, 117 ha in 2019, 7 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 148 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Patnos Panos 122,833 inhabitants · 18.0 km from the centre where it started
    182 ha reached on 8 Sept
    0.1 %

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 land100 %

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 Sept 27.8 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept 28.0 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Sept 27.6 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Sept after 28.0 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Sept after 26.1 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Sept after 25.5 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
14 Sept after 26.6 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Sept after 27.0 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Sept after 24.5 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Sept after 22.4 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept after 22.9 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Sept after 25.2 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Sept after 24.8 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2021
After · 17 Sept 2021

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 6 September 2021 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1036 µg/m³
6789101112131415161718
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 · 9Every 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 Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Patnos fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2021 to 10 September 2021 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2021 to 10 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 182 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Patnos (182 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Patnos and came within 18.0 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 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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 ›

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.

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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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 September 2021 to 10 September 2021. 9 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.