How long did the Prilep fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 7 September 2019 and 13 September 2019: 7 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,771 hectares (27.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Prilep (1,479 ha, 1.2 %); Mogila (1,121 ha, 4.4 %); Novatsi (171 ha, 0.2 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Prilep and came within 9.5 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 27.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 53 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 North Macedonia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

MK · North Macedonia · 2019-09-07 → 2019-09-13

Prilep fire, 7 September 2019 Општина Прилеп · Prilep, Mogila, Novatsi

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2019, 23:46 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2019 in Prilep, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,771 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Pelagonia since 2016 (of 76 with a page). The largest in North Macedonia in 2019, of 77.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mogila · 2017 Prilep · 2026 Mogila · 2026 Mariovo · 2024

Burnt area: 2,771ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 7days; 7 Sept 2019 – 13 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 7 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 44; in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start: 5; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 79MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept13 Sept

Play back 13 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 13 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

27°high

53km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 19 Sept.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 296 ha in 2017.

296 ha Mogila fire, March 2017 359 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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

Prilep Општина Прилеп 69,025 inhabitants · 9.5 km from the centre where it started

1,479 ha reached on 7 Sept

1.2 %
Mogila Општина Могила 5,283 inhabitants · 12.8 km from the centre

1,121 ha reached on 10 Sept

4.4 %
Novatsi Општина Новаци 2,648 inhabitants · 10.7 km from the centre

171 ha reached on 10 Sept

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

Agricultural areas54 %
Scrub and transitional woodland25 %
Other natural land10 %
Broadleaved forest8.3 %
Mixed forest1.7 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area0.51 ha

Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.51 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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)
7 Sept	25.5 °C	42 %	26 km/h	3.0 mm	Low 5
8 Sept	26.8 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
9 Sept	27.3 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Sept	27.0 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
11 Sept	25.4 °C	29 %	23 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
12 Sept	25.7 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Sept	25.0 °C	19 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Sept after	25.6 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Sept after	26.0 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Sept after	28.6 °C	15 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Sept after	29.9 °C	11 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
18 Sept after	27.4 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Sept after	22.2 °C	37 %	28 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Aug 2019

After · 20 Sept 2019

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.

Detections table · 44Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in North Macedonia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Prilep fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 7 September 2019 and 13 September 2019: 7 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,771 hectares (27.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Prilep (1,479 ha, 1.2 %); Mogila (1,121 ha, 4.4 %); Novatsi (171 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Prilep and came within 9.5 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 27.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 53 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 North Macedonia (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: 193 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Центар за управување со кризи ↗

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.

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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 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 193 · 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 44 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.

Where it burned