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TN · Tunisia · –

الوسلاتية fire, July 2020 الوسلاتية, سليانة الجنوبية

Out · last detection 29 Jul 2020, 13:07 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2020 in الوسلاتية, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 114 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 20 in Tunisia in 2020, of 20.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.1 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…

Suggestions: كسرى · 2016سبيطلة · 2017برقو · 2022برقو · 2026

Burnt area
114ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
28 Jul 2020 – 30 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
2
delegations
Started on
28 Jul
2020
Heat detections
5
in a single hotspot: 21 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
34MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul30 Jul
29 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jul 2020 · 20 MW · 1 29 Jul 2020 · 48 MW · 4
28 Jul 29 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

33°high
35km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. الوسلاتية where it started
    113 ha reached on 28 Jul
    0.1 %
  2. سليانة الجنوبية
    1 ha
    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

  • Sclerophyllous scrub65 %
  • Broadleaved forest20 %
  • Other natural land11 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland2.6 %
  • Mixed forest0.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
28 Jul 32.8 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Jul 32.3 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Jul 32.8 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Jul after 34.4 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Aug after 36.2 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Aug after 35.8 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Aug after 34.9 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 50
4 Aug after 26.7 °C 40 % 41 km/h 3.4 mm Low 9

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 42.6, a minimum humidity of 17% and 12 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.

FWI at the start 42.6
Minimum humidity 17 %
Days without rain 12
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

كسرى fire, July 2016
659 ha 3 days FWI 43.1 Min. humidity 16 % 14 km away, in 2016

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.0 mm on 24 Jul.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
508 ha
median area
25 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.0 mm
rain at the end (median; 9 of 16 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 114 ha against a median of 508 ha. It lasted 3 days, against 3 days.

In 7 of 16, 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 2.0 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

3.4 mmfirst rain
4 Aug5 days after it ended
35km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 30 Jul, and on 4 Aug 3.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 9 of 16, with a median of 2.0 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 · 21 Jul 2020
After · 6 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.

Detections table · 5Every 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 Tunisia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the الوسلاتية fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 July 2020 and 30 July 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 114 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: الوسلاتية (113 ha, 0.1 %); سليانة الجنوبية (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tunisia (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: 16. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 508 ha; 25 % went past 1,000 ha. In 7 of 16, 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 2.0 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: 198 · 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
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 198.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.