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ME · Montenegro ·

Podgorica Municipality fire, 24 March 2019 Podgorica Municipality

Out · last detection 24 Mar 2019, 12:12 UTC

The fire started on 24 March 2019 in Podgorica Municipality, Montenegro, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 221 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 15 in Montenegro in 2019, of 31.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nikšić Municipality · 2021Nikšić Municipality · 2022Podgorica Municipality · 2017Podgorica Municipality · 2025

Burnt area
221ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
24 Mar 2019 – 24 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
24 Mar
2019
Heat detections
16
in a single hotspot: 7 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
62MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Mar24 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

24 Mar 2019 · 62 MW · 16

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

The weather it burned in

23°high
31km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 33 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Podgorica Municipality where it started
    221 ha reached on 24 Mar
    0.2 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland43 %
  • Other natural land40 %
  • Broadleaved forest17 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
24 Mar 22.7 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
25 Mar after 19.9 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
26 Mar after 13.4 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
27 Mar after 16.4 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
28 Mar after 17.4 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
29 Mar after 18.3 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
30 Mar after 20.2 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
31 Mar after 23.7 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
1 Apr after 23.5 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
2 Apr after 20.9 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 16
3 Apr after 17.3 °C 52 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 9.1, a minimum humidity of 23% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 27.

FWI at the start 9.1
Minimum humidity 23 %
Days without rain 9
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Nikšić Municipality fire, March 2021
239 ha 2 days FWI 7.6 Min. humidity 23 % 37 km away, in 2021

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.9 mm on 5 Mar.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
239 ha
median area
7 %
went past 1,000 ha
12.0 mm
rain at the end (median; 27 of 27 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (221 ha against a median of 239 ha) and lasted 1 day, against 3 days.

All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 12.0 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

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
31km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 24 Mar, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 27 of 27, with a median of 12.0 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 · 17 Mar 2019
After · 31 Mar 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 16Every 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 Montenegro

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Podgorica Municipality fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 March 2019 and 24 March 2019: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 221 hectares (2.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Podgorica Municipality (221 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 9, class Low.
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.
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: 27. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 239 ha; 7 % went past 1,000 ha. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 12.0 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 · 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 With cross-checks and a citable version

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. 16 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 2020, 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.