Belalcázar fire, July 2022 Belalcázar
The fire started on 25 July 2022 in Belalcázar, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,067 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in Córdoba since 2016 (of 16 with a page). Number 42 in Spain in 2022, of 196.
The power measured by the satellite is low (7.7 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…
- Burnt area
- 1,067ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 25 Jul 2022 – 26 Jul 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 25 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 8 MW
- Danger at start
- 71
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 59MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
26 Jul 2022 · 59 MW · 23
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 280 ha in 2021.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,069 ha reached on 26 Jul3.0 %
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 areas47 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland23 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub16 %
- Other natural land15 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Official record
According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 25 July 2022 and burned 386 ha (the satellite measured 1,067 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
- Belalcázar Cerro Malagon 25 July 2022 · 18:45 386 ha · extinguished on 26 July 2022 · cause: negligence
MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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 | 39.0 °C | 7 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 26 Jul | 36.5 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 27 Jul after | 35.5 °C | 10 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 28 Jul after | 36.3 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Jul after | 37.5 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 30 Jul after | 37.5 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 31 Jul after | 38.7 °C | 14 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 1 Aug after | 39.3 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 2 Aug after | 39.8 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 3 Aug after | 38.4 °C | 10 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 4 Aug after | 36.4 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 5 Aug after | 36.8 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 25 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 23Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 328 haBelalcázarJuly 2021 · 1 day · 2 km away
- 335 haHinojosa del DuqueJuly 2024 · 3 days · 21 km away
- 267 haValsequilloJuly 2024 · 1 day · 24 km away
- 264 haMonterrubio de la SerenaOctober 2025 · 2 days · 24 km away
- 1,141 haAlmadénJuly 2021 · 1 day · 30 km away
- 332 haCastueraJune 2022 · 1 day · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Belalcázar fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 25 July 2022 and 26 July 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,067 hectares (10.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Belalcázar (1,069 ha, 3.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Belalcázar and came within 2.3 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 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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 · 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 23 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 386 official ha against 1,067 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.