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Podgorica Municipality fire, 10 July 2017 Podgorica Municipality

Out · last measured on 13 Jul 2017

The fire started on 10 July 2017 in Podgorica Municipality, Montenegro, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 397 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 32 in Montenegro in 2017, of 75.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Podgorica Municipality · 2025Podgorica Municipality · 2025Bar Municipality · 2017Budva Municipality · 2024

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
397ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
10 Jul 2017 – 13 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Jul
2017
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
34km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 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. Podgorica Municipality where it started
    397 ha
    0.3 %

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 land86 %
  • Agricultural areas14 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
10 Jul 35.6 °C 40 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Jul 34.8 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Jul 34.7 °C 35 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Jul 35.5 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Jul after 33.8 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Jul after 32.4 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jul after 28.1 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Jul after 29.1 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jul after 30.8 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jul after 31.0 °C 47 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Jul after 31.1 °C 48 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Jul after 32.7 °C 50 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Jul after 35.0 °C 40 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Jul after 35.0 °C 39 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jul 2017
After · 20 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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Montenegro ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Podgorica Municipality fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 10 July 2017 and 13 July 2017: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 397 hectares (4.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Podgorica Municipality (397 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Montenegro (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 · 123 · 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.

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 · 123.

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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 ADM1 (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.