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Cagnano Varano fire, July 2017 Cagnano Varano

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2017, 11:16 UTC

The fire started on 10 July 2017 in Cagnano Varano, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 662 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Foggia since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 27 in Italy in 2017, of 361.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Giovanni Rotondo · 2025San Giovanni Rotondo · 2025Monte Sant'Angelo · 2023San Marco in Lamis · 2023

Burnt area
662ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
10 Jul 2017 – 11 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Jul
2017
Heat detections
30
in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
159MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jul11 Jul
11 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jul 2017 · 251 MW · 17 11 Jul 2017 · 67 MW · 13
10 Jul 11 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

37°high
49km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (6.6 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. Cagnano Varano 6,573 inhabitants · 2.6 km from the centre where it started
    662 ha reached on 10 Jul
    4.0 %

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

  • Other natural land55 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland30 %
  • Broadleaved forest8.5 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub3.9 %
  • Agricultural areas3.0 %

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)
10 Jul 36.8 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Jul 35.8 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Jul after 34.8 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Jul after 32.3 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Jul after 30.7 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
15 Jul after 27.3 °C 43 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Jul after 24.1 °C 36 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul after 24.9 °C 37 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Jul after 27.5 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jul after 30.9 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jul after 32.0 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Jul after 34.2 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jul 2017
After · 18 Jul 2017

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 12 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1031 µg/m³
891011121314
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 · 30Every 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 Cagnano Varano fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 10 July 2017 and 11 July 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 662 hectares (6.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cagnano Varano (662 ha, 4.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Cagnano Varano and came within 2.6 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 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class 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. 30 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.