How long did the Chefchaouen fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2018 and 1 August 2018: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 164 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chefchaouen (165 ha, 0.0 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 24.3 km of Chefchaouen. 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 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

MA · Morocco · 2018-07-30 → 2018-08-01

Chefchaouen fire, July 2018 إقليم شفشاون · Chefchaouen

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2018, 14:17 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2018 in Chefchaouen, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 164 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 41th largest in Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima since 2016 (of 53 with a page). The largest in Morocco in 2018, of 3.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.9 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: 164ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 3days; 30 Jul 2018 – 1 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; provinces
Started on: 30 Jul; 2018
Heat detections: 23; in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Energy released: 152MW; sum of detected power

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul1 Aug

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

29°high

38km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 20 ha in 2017.

20 ha Chefchaouen fire, September 2017 267 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Chefchaouen إقليم شفشاون 412,713 inhabitants · 24.3 km from the town where it started

165 ha reached on 31 Jul

0.0 %

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

Broadleaved forest93 %
Scrub and transitional woodland3.1 %
Coniferous forest2.5 %
Agricultural areas1.9 %

Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 98 %

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	Danger (FWI)
30 Jul	27.6 °C	23 %	23 km/h	High 32
31 Jul	28.7 °C	24 %	33 km/h	High 34
1 Aug	28.7 °C	28 %	38 km/h	High 37
2 Aug after	29.7 °C	23 %	39 km/h	High 37
3 Aug after	29.8 °C	22 %	37 km/h	High 36
4 Aug after	30.9 °C	25 %	40 km/h	High 35
5 Aug after	31.2 °C	17 %	30 km/h	High 36
6 Aug after	30.6 °C	22 %	30 km/h	High 37
7 Aug after	30.7 °C	22 %	23 km/h	High 36
8 Aug after	28.5 °C	24 %	37 km/h	High 36
9 Aug after	27.2 °C	26 %	26 km/h	High 32
10 Aug after	28.0 °C	34 %	24 km/h	High 29
11 Aug after	29.2 °C	25 %	27 km/h	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jul 2018

After · 8 Aug 2018

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 4 August 2018 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1033 µg/m³

282930311234

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 · 23Every 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 Morocco ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chefchaouen fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2018 and 1 August 2018: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 164 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chefchaouen (165 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 24.3 km of Chefchaouen. 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 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Morocco (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: 15 · 150

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 15 · 150.

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.

Where it burned