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Chefchaouen fire, August 2019 إقليم شفشاون · Chefchaouen

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2019, 12:37 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2019 in Chefchaouen, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,216 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 2 in Morocco in 2019, of 7.

Burnt area
1,216ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
29 Aug 2019 – 3 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
provinces
Started on
29 Aug
2019
Heat detections
145
in a single hotspot: 484 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Sept 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug3 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

293031124

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
46km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 5 Sept.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Chefchaouen إقليم شفشاون 412,713 inhabitants · 13.5 km from the town where it started
    1,221 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.3 %

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 forest51 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland35 %
  • Agricultural areas7.1 %
  • Coniferous forest6.6 %

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)
29 Aug 28.3 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
30 Aug 28.8 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Aug 28.8 °C 34 % 28 km/h 3.0 mm Low 8
1 Sept 28.7 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 21
2 Sept 28.8 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
3 Sept 27.2 °C 40 % 40 km/h 1.7 mm Low 11
4 Sept after 27.5 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
5 Sept after 26.0 °C 35 % 48 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2019
After · 10 Sept 2019

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 31 August 2019 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1032 µg/m³
27282930311234567
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 · 145Every 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 Morocco ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chefchaouen fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 29 August 2019 and 3 September 2019: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,216 hectares (12.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chefchaouen (1,221 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 13.5 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 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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

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 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.