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TN · Tunisia ·

Balta Bouawene fire, July 2020 Balta Bouawene

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2020, 01:09 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2020 in Balta Bouawene, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 127 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Jendouba since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 19 in Tunisia in 2020, of 20.

The power measured by the satellite is low (1.5 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: سبيطلة · 2021سبيطلة · 2025فرنانة · 2021Souarekh · 2017

Burnt area
127ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
31 Jul 2020 – 31 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
delegations
Started on
31 Jul
2020
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 2 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
2MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul31 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jul 2020 · 2 MW · 1

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
37km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 43 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Balta Bouawene where it started
    127 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.4 %

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

  • Sclerophyllous scrub76 %
  • Agricultural areas21 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.6 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.8 %
  • Other natural land0.8 %

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)

Started with Very dry air: 40 % of the area in Tunisia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
31 Jul 40.5 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
1 Aug after 37.3 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Aug after 36.8 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Aug after 34.2 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Aug after 27.8 °C 47 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Aug after 27.6 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Aug after 28.6 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Aug after 29.1 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Aug after 29.0 °C 51 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Aug after 29.9 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Aug after 32.8 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 58.9, a minimum humidity of 8% and 15 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.

FWI at the start 58.9
Minimum humidity 8 %
Days without rain 15
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

سبيطلة fire, June 2021
111 ha 5 days FWI 59.0 Min. humidity 9 % 148 km away, in 2021

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

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
390 ha
median area
12 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.5 mm
rain at the end (median; 10 of 16 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 127 ha against a median of 390 ha. It lasted 1 day, against 3 days.

In 6 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 1.5 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
37km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 31 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 10 of 16, with a median of 1.5 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 Jul 2020
After · 7 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 · 1Every 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 Balta Bouawene fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 July 2020 and 31 July 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 127 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Balta Bouawene (127 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
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 390 ha; 12 % went past 1,000 ha. In 6 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 1.5 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: 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. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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.