Tropojë fire, March 2022 Tropojë
The fire started on 20 March 2022 in Tropojë, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 554 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 5th largest in Kukës since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 5 in Albania in 2022, of 50.
The power measured by the satellite is low (13.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 554ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 20 Mar 2022 – 24 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 20 Mar
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 32
- in a single hotspot: 14 MW
- Danger at start
- 1
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 29MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 30 Mar.
This area had burned before
3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1 ha in 2019, 17 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Tropojë where it started554 ha reached on 20 Mar0.5 %
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 land43 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland27 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub21 %
- Broadleaved forest8.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Mar | 5.6 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 21 Mar | 7.2 °C | 23 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 22 Mar | 12.1 °C | 26 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 23 Mar | 13.0 °C | 23 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 24 Mar | 17.8 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 25 Mar after | 17.7 °C | 16 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 26 Mar after | 16.2 °C | 23 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 27 Mar after | 17.2 °C | 15 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 28 Mar after | 13.9 °C | 37 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 29 Mar after | 14.3 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 30 Mar after | 13.4 °C | 40 % | 54 km/h | 1.7 mm | Very low 1 |
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 22 March 2022 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily 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 · 32Every 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 Tropojë fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 March 2022 to 24 March 2022 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 March 2022 to 23 March 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 554 hectares (5.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tropojë (554 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 13.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, class Very low.
- 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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 March 2022 to 23 March 2022. 32 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.