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Agrigento fire, August 2020 Agrigento

Out · last measured on 7 Aug 2020

The fire started on 7 August 2020 in Agrigento, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 106 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 273th largest in Agrigento since 2016 (of 289 with a page). Number 128 in Italy in 2020, of 140.

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
106ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
7 Aug 2020 – 7 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Aug
2020
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

29°high
34km/h · peak gust
46%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 42 ha in 2017, 25 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 49 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Agrigento 55,512 inhabitants · 9.0 km from the town where it started
    106 ha
    0.4 %

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

  • Agricultural areas100 %

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)
7 Aug 28.8 °C 46 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Aug after 29.7 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Aug after 31.2 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Aug after 30.2 °C 43 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Aug after 29.4 °C 55 % 28 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 16
12 Aug after 30.5 °C 51 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Aug after 31.5 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Aug after 31.7 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Aug after 31.8 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Aug after 33.2 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Aug after 31.3 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Jul 2020
After · 14 Aug 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 10 August 2020 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
PM1020 µg/m³
5678910
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Agrigento fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 7 August 2020 and 7 August 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 106 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Agrigento (106 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 9.0 km of Agrigento. 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 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (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: 112 · 1515

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 112 · 1515.

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 ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). 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.