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Strelcha fire, 8 July 2024 Стрелча · Strelcha

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2024, 11:28 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2024 in Strelcha, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 196 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 42 in Bulgaria in 2024, of 62.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.9 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
196ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
8 Jul 2024 – 9 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 Jul
2024
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Energy released
26MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul9 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

8

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
25km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 11 Jul.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Strelcha Стрелча 4,131 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the town where it started
    196 ha reached on 8 Jul
    1.0 %

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 woodland69 %
  • Agricultural areas22 %
  • Broadleaved forest9.6 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 97 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

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 Jul 34.8 °C 19 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Jul 34.6 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Jul after 35.5 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Jul after 34.7 °C 28 % 27 km/h 2.8 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2024
After · 16 Jul 2024

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 11 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak10 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1014 µg/m³
Optical depth0.21
6789101112
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 · 2Every 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 Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Strelcha fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 July 2024 and 9 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 196 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Strelcha (196 ha, 1.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.3 km of Strelcha. 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 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 25 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (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: 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 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 (Public Domain). 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.