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Prilep fire, September 2023 Општина Прилеп · Prilep

Out · last measured on 30 Sept 2023

The fire started on 30 September 2023 in Prilep, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,259 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Pelagonia since 2016 (of 76 with a page). The largest in North Macedonia in 2023, of 19.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Prilep · 2019Mariovo · 2024Prilep · 2026Chashka · 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
1,259ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
30 Sept 2023 – 30 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Sept
2023
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

23°high
26km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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

  1. Prilep Општина Прилеп 69,025 inhabitants · 13.7 km from the centre where it started
    1,260 ha
    1.0 %

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 areas76 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland24 %

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)
30 Sept 22.7 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
1 Oct after 21.3 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 12
2 Oct after 20.8 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Oct after 20.5 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
4 Oct after 23.9 °C 33 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
5 Oct after 23.2 °C 42 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
6 Oct after 21.2 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
7 Oct after 21.1 °C 37 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
8 Oct after 23.5 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
9 Oct after 21.6 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
10 Oct after 22.0 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2023
After · 7 Oct 2023

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 1 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1028 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
282930123
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 North Macedonia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Prilep fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 September 2023 and 30 September 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,259 hectares (12.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Prilep (1,260 ha, 1.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Prilep and came within 13.7 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 22.7 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
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 ›

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 193 · 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 (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.