Shkodër fire, 30 September 2026 Lezhë, Shkodër, Malësi e Madhe
Satellites first detected fire on 30 September 2026 in Shkodër, Albania. It has been active for 8 days, with 17 heat detections and an area with fire of about 210 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.
The power measured by the satellite is low (14.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
- Area with fire
- ≈ 210ha
- rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
- Duration
- 8days
- 30 Sept 2026 – 7 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Sept
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 17
- in a single hotspot: 14 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 76MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
What happened to each town
-
Lezhë where it started196 ha reached on 30 Sept0.4 %
-
126 ha reached on 30 Sept0.1 %
-
70 ha reached on 6 Oct0.1 %
Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Sept | 24.5 °C | 17 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 23 Sept | 23.6 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Sept | 24.5 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 25 Sept | 14.9 °C | 45 % | 23 km/h | 43.4 mm | Very low 0 |
| 26 Sept | 22.2 °C | 42 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 27 Sept | 24.5 °C | 31 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Sept | 26.2 °C | 24 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 29 Sept | 26.9 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Sept | 26.7 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 1 Oct | 26.6 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 20 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 17Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Shkodër fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 30 September 2026 to 7 October 2026 (8 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
- How much area did it burn?
- There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 210 hectares with fire (2.1 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lezhë (196 ha, 0.4 %); Shkodër (126 ha, 0.1 %); Malësi e Madhe (70 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Shkodër fire still active?
- No fire detections since 7 Oct 2026, 11:49 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 26.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 128 · 112
Satellite cross-check
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
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 2.5 Generic). 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.