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TR · Türkiye · –

Yayladere fire, 31 August 2020 Yayladere

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2020, 23:08 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2020 in Yayladere, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 487 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Bingöl since 2016 (of 19 with a page). Number 36 in Türkiye in 2020, of 212.

Burnt area
487ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
31 Aug 2020 – 1 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Aug
2020
Heat detections
15
in a single hotspot: 98 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
164MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug1 Sept
1 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2020 · 255 MW · 7 1 Sept 2020 · 72 MW · 8
31 Aug 1 Sept

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
45km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 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. Yayladere 2,139 inhabitants · 6.8 km from the centre where it started
    487 ha reached on 31 Aug
    1.4 %

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 land54 %
  • Broadleaved forest45 %
  • Agricultural areas1.0 %

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)

Started with Extreme FWI: 61 % of the area in Türkiye Very dry air: 35 % of the area in Türkiye

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
31 Aug 35.3 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Sept 35.4 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
2 Sept after 31.8 °C 16 % 58 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 66
3 Sept after 34.7 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept after 35.3 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept after 34.5 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
6 Sept after 33.7 °C 15 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
7 Sept after 32.8 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Sept after 32.6 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Sept after 30.6 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Sept after 32.1 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept after 31.3 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 53.0, a minimum humidity of 11% and 19 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 47.

FWI at the start 53.0
Minimum humidity 11 %
Days without rain 19
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Sivrice fire, July 2016
282 ha 1 day FWI 53.0 Min. humidity 10 % 127 km away, in 2016

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

1 day
median duration
211 ha
median area
15 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.5 mm
rain at the end (median; 10 of 47 had it)

It was 2.3 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 2 days, against 1 day.

Only 8 of its 47 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 37 of 47, 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 2.5 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
45km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 1 Sept, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 10 of 47, with a median of 2.5 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.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2020
After · 8 Sept 2020

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 2 September 2020 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1033 µg/m³
29 Aug31 Aug2 Sept4 Sept
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 · 15Every 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 Türkiye

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yayladere fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 August 2020 and 1 September 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 487 hectares (4.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yayladere (487 ha, 1.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Yayladere and came within 6.8 km of its centre. 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 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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: 47. Their median duration was 1 day and their median area 211 ha; 15 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 8 of its 47 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 37 of 47, 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 2.5 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: 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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 15 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology

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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.