Burned area
satellite only506ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 28 August 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
UA · Ukraine · –
Volnovakha fire, 20 August 2024 Волноваський район · Volnovakha, Marinka
Out · last detection 21 Aug 2024, 11:05 UTC
The fire started on 20 August 2024 in Volnovakha, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 506 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 106th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 316 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.
The power measured by the satellite is low (10.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only2days
20 Aug 2024 to 21 Aug 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 21 Aug 2024, 11:05 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only20 Aug 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only16
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 10 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Aug 2024 – 21 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only81MW
Total radiative power on 21 August 2024; hotspots that day: 13.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 21 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model56.0FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 14.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Aug 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model33.7°C · 19% RH
High of 33.7 °C and minimum humidity of 19% on 21 August 2024; gusts of 41 km/h on 21 August 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Aug 2024 – 21 Aug 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 506 ha
- Dates
- 20 Aug 2024 – 21 Aug 2024
- Name
- Volnovakha
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/volnovakha-2024-08?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire volnovakha-2024-08.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-08-20 | 3 | 20 | 33.4 | 14.4 | 18 | 13.9 | 32.4 | 0 | 56 | extremo | 1 |
| 2024-08-21 | 13 | 81 | 33.7 | 17.7 | 19 | 18.5 | 40.7 | 0 | 68.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2024-08-22 | 0 | 0 | 34.6 | 19.2 | 19 | 19.6 | 42.1 | 0.2 | 70.2 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2024-08-23 | 0 | 0 | 32.5 | 20.6 | 30 | 11.6 | 23.8 | 0 | 47.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2024-08-24 | 0 | 0 | 32.5 | 18.3 | 37 | 13.4 | 29.2 | 0.3 | 39 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2024-08-25 | 0 | 0 | 32.1 | 18.7 | 22 | 17.3 | 37.8 | 0 | 56.4 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-08-26 | 0 | 0 | 32.4 | 17.8 | 25 | 18.1 | 41 | 0.1 | 56.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-08-27 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 19.9 | 28 | 23.4 | 46.8 | 0.3 | 68.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-08-28 | 0 | 0 | 32.5 | 22.3 | 21 | 23.8 | 49.3 | 0 | 72.8 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2024-08-29 | 0 | 0 | 31.2 | 20.4 | 27 | 21.5 | 44.6 | 0 | 64.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-08-30 | 0 | 0 | 29.5 | 20.3 | 21 | 25 | 57.2 | 0.2 | 77.6 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2024-08-31 | 0 | 0 | 30.5 | 20.9 | 20 | 26.3 | 54.4 | 0 | 78 | muy_extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 506ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 20 Aug 2024 – 21 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 16
- in a single hotspot: 10 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 50MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Aug21 Aug
21 Aug 2024
How it evolved, day by day
20 Aug
21 Aug
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
41km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity
It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 21 ha in 2023.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Kyiv boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
395 ha reached on 20 Aug0.2 %
-
112 ha reached on 21 Aug0.1 %
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
- Agricultural areas84 %
- Other natural land14 %
- Mixed forest0.8 %
- Artificial surfaces0.6 %
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)
Started with Extreme FWI: 28 % of the area in Ukraine
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Aug | 33.4 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 21 Aug | 33.7 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 22 Aug after | 34.6 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 23 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 30 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 24 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 39 |
| 25 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 26 Aug after | 32.4 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 27 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 28 % | 47 km/h | 0.3 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 28 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 21 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 29 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 27 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 30 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 21 % | 57 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 31 Aug after | 30.5 °C | 20 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 56.0, a minimum humidity of 18% and 14 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 15.
FWI at the start
56.0
Minimum humidity
18 %
Days without rain
14
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Volnovakha fire, 20 August 2024
506 ha
2 days
FWI 56.0
Min. humidity 18 %
Perevalsk fire, August 2025
605 ha
1 day
FWI 55.0
Min. humidity 18 %
91 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.8 mm on 25 Aug.
Popasna fire, October 2025
192 ha
2 days
FWI 54.7
Min. humidity 18 %
128 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 10.4 mm on 5 Oct.
Kostiantynivka fire, July 2025
162 ha
5 days
FWI 55.9
Min. humidity 18 %
74 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.6 mm on 3 Aug.
Bakhmut fire, July 2025
253 ha
2 days
FWI 56.3
Min. humidity 18 %
88 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.6 mm on 3 Aug.
Bakhmut fire, July 2025
123 ha
5 days
FWI 56.3
Min. humidity 18 %
95 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.6 mm on 3 Aug.
What happened to them
- 2 days
- median duration
- 192 ha
- median area
- 0 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 6.5 mm
- rain at the end (median; 14 of 15 had it)
It was 2.6 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 2 days, against 2 days.
Only 3 of its 15 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 1 of 15, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 6.5 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
41km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 21 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 14 of 15, with a median of 6.5 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Aug 2024
After · 28 Aug 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 23 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.45
WHO 15
18 Aug20 Aug22 Aug24 Aug
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 · 16Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,125 haMarinka Мар'їнський район29 July 2025 · 3 days · 6 km away
- 2,867 haMarinka Мар'їнський район16 August 2026 · 10 days · 15 km away
- 1,659 haMarinka Мар'їнський район16 August 2026 · 8 days · 15 km away
- 1,354 haVolnovakha Волноваський район20 March 2022 · 3 days · 16 km away
- 1,371 haMarinka Мар'їнський район20 March 2022 · 6 days · 30 km away
- 10,977 haBoikivske Кальміуський район8 July 2025 · 4 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Volnovakha fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 20 August 2024 and 21 August 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 506 hectares (5.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Volnovakha (395 ha, 0.2 %); Marinka (112 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 18.6 km of the centre of Marinka, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.
- 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 15. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 192 ha; 0 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 3 of its 15 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 1 of 15, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 6.5 mm.
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 · 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.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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. 16 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 (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.