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Sumy fire, 20 August 2024 Сумський район · Sumy

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2024, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2024 in Sumy, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 142 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 85th largest in Sumy Oblast since 2016 (of 129 with a page). Number 1407 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Burnt area
142ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
20 Aug 2024 – 20 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Aug
2024
Heat detections
18
in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Energy released
208MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

20

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
16km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Sumy Сумський район 23.2 km from the town where it started
    142 ha reached on 19 Aug
    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

  • Other natural land55 %
  • Mixed forest35 %
  • Agricultural areas9.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
20 Aug 33.6 °C 23 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Aug after 34.5 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug after 34.0 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Aug after 27.6 °C 50 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Aug after 29.2 °C 46 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
25 Aug after 31.9 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Aug after 32.5 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Aug after 30.7 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Aug after 30.6 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Aug after 30.8 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Aug after 30.7 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Aug 2024
After · 27 Aug 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 20 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1016 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
17181920212223
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 · 18Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sumy fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 20 August 2024 and 20 August 2024: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 142 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sumy (142 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 23.2 km of Sumy. 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 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 16 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 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 101 · 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.