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Shtip fire, October 2023 Општина Штип · Shtip, Radovish

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2023, 00:05 UTC

The fire started on 8 October 2023 in Shtip, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 550 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in East since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 10 in North Macedonia in 2023, of 19.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
550ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
8 Oct 2023 – 10 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
8 Oct
2023
Heat detections
8
in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
121MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Oct 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Oct10 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

910

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
42km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.6 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Shtip Општина Штип 44,866 inhabitants · 9.6 km from the town where it started
    519 ha reached on 9 Oct
    0.9 %
  2. Radovish Општина Радовиш 24,122 inhabitants · 140.1 km from the town
    32 ha
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland71 %
  • Agricultural areas12 %
  • Broadleaved forest9.8 %
  • Other natural land7.5 %

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)
8 Oct 25.5 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Oct 22.8 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Oct 23.2 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Oct after 22.2 °C 30 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
12 Oct after 22.6 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Oct after 25.7 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Oct after 25.7 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Oct after 24.7 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Oct after 16.3 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
17 Oct after 9.5 °C 55 % 20 km/h 16.6 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Oct 2023
After · 17 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 13 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
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.27
678910111213
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)

Detections table · 8Every 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 North Macedonia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Shtip fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 October 2023 and 10 October 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 550 hectares (5.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Shtip (519 ha, 0.9 %); Radovish (32 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 9.6 km of Shtip. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

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
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.

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.