How long did the Boghar fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 1 July 2020 and 1 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 191 hectares (1.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Boghar (192 ha, 1.5 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.1 km of Boghar. 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 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

DZ · Algeria · 2020-07-01 → 2020-07-01

Boghar fire, July 2020 بوغار · Boghar

Out · last detection 2 Jul 2020, 01:53 UTC

The fire started on 1 July 2020 in Boghar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 191 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 36th largest in Médéa since 2016 (of 55 with a page). Number 145 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

The power measured by the satellite is low (4.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 191ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 1 Jul 2020 – 1 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 1 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 3; in a single hotspot: 5 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Energy released: 7MW; sum of detected power

Play back 2 Jul 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jul1 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

37km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 10 Jul.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

Boghar بوغار 5,972 inhabitants · 5.1 km from the town where it started

192 ha reached on 1 Jul

1.5 %

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

Mixed forest79 %
Other natural land17 %
Broadleaved forest3.6 %
Agricultural areas0.5 %

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

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)
1 Jul	38.3 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
2 Jul after	39.9 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
3 Jul after	35.3 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
4 Jul after	33.2 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
5 Jul after	32.9 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
6 Jul after	31.7 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
7 Jul after	35.6 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
8 Jul after	37.7 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
9 Jul after	38.5 °C	14 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
10 Jul after	35.9 °C	15 %	35 km/h	1.6 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Jun 2020

After · 8 Jul 2020

Before After

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 1 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak33 µg/m³

Days over the guideline3 days

PM1052 µg/m³

WHO 15

293012345

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 · 3Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Boghar fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 1 July 2020 and 1 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 191 hectares (1.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Boghar (192 ha, 1.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.1 km of Boghar. 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 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (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: 14 · 1021

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 14 · 1021.

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-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.

Where it burned