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Alimena fire, July 2023 Alimena, Bompietro, Petralia Sottana

Out · last detection 26 Jul 2023, 00:33 UTC

The fire started on 25 July 2023 in Alimena, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,612 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Palermo since 2016 (of 178 with a page). Number 8 in Italy in 2023, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Alimena · 2016Resuttano · 2026Madonie · 2021Polizzi Generosa · 2021

Burnt area
1,612ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
25 Jul 2023 – 26 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
25 Jul
2023
Heat detections
18
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
95
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
326MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jul26 Jul
26 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 2023 · 646 MW · 14 26 Jul 2023 · 6 MW · 4
25 Jul 26 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

40°high
57km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.0 mm on 5 Aug.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (16 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Alimena 1,761 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the centre where it started
    961 ha reached on 25 Jul
    16 %
  2. Bompietro 876 inhabitants · 7.1 km from the centre
    654 ha
    15 %
  3. Petralia Sottana
    0 ha reached on 26 Jul
    0.0 %

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 areas54 %
  • Other natural land31 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub15 %

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)
25 Jul 39.8 °C 14 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 95
26 Jul 31.7 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Jul after 30.2 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Jul after 31.7 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul after 35.8 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Jul after 35.2 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
31 Jul after 35.6 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
1 Aug after 34.1 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Aug after 33.9 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
3 Aug after 33.9 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Aug after 35.4 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Aug after 27.4 °C 33 % 54 km/h 6.0 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Jul 2023
After · 2 Aug 2023

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 26 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1076 µg/m³
Optical depth0.80
23242526272829
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 · 18Every 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 Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Alimena fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 25 July 2023 and 26 July 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,612 hectares (16.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Alimena (961 ha, 16 %); Bompietro (654 ha, 15 %); Petralia Sottana (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Alimena and came within 0.5 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 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 95, class Very extreme.
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 · 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

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 18 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 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.