Tepelenë fire, 30 July 2024 Tepelenë
The fire started on 30 July 2024 in Tepelenë, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,063 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in Gjirokastër since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 5 in Albania in 2024, of 70.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,063ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 30 Jul 2024 – 3 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 119
- in a single hotspot: 159 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 355MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 37 ha in 2019, 54 ha in 2020, 139 ha in 2021, 11 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 227 ha that had burned before.
- 98 ha Tepelenë fire, August 2021 102 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 40 ha Tepelenë fire, August 2021 138 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 12 ha Tepelenë fire, September 2020 119 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Tepelenë where it started2,065 ha reached on 30 Jul2.5 %
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
- Other natural land66 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub13 %
- Broadleaved forest4.3 %
- Agricultural areas1.3 %
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 Jul | 30.0 °C | 35 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 31 Jul | 30.3 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Aug | 30.6 °C | 36 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 2 Aug | 31.0 °C | 28 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 3 Aug | 32.0 °C | 24 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 4 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 5 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 37 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Aug after | 29.4 °C | 33 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Aug after | 30.7 °C | 32 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 Aug after | 30.5 °C | 35 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 44 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 10 Aug after | 31.7 °C | 27 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 11 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 12 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 13 Aug after | 33.5 °C | 29 % | 44 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 4 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 16 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 · 119Every 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 Tepelenë fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2024 and 3 August 2024: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,063 hectares (20.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tepelenë (2,065 ha, 2.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class 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 · 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 119 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.
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.