Chefchaouen fire, March 2020 إقليم شفشاون · Chefchaouen
The fire started on 17 March 2020 in Chefchaouen, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 127 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 46th largest in Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 11 in Morocco in 2020, of 11.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 127ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 17 Mar 2020 – 18 Mar 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- provinces
- Started on
- 17 Mar
- 2020
- Danger at start
- 1
- Very low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 19 Mar.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 126 ha in 2019.
What happened to each town
-
127 ha0.0 %
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
- Broadleaved forest47 %
- Mixed forest42 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland8.7 %
- Agricultural areas2.4 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Mar | 11.3 °C | 44 % | 72 km/h | 3.9 mm | Very low 1 |
| 18 Mar | 12.0 °C | 79 % | 72 km/h | 6.1 mm | Very low 0 |
| 19 Mar after | 11.3 °C | 88 % | 56 km/h | 6.5 mm | Very low 0 |
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 18 March 2020 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily 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)
Other fires nearby
- 2,128 haChefchaouen إقليم شفشاونAugust 2021 · 5 days · 4 km away
- 1,538 haChefchaouen إقليم شفشاون12 August 2025 · 2 days · 7 km away
- 2,084 haLarache إقليم العرائشAugust 2020 · 12 days · 18 km away
- 8,369 haLarache إقليم العرائش25 July 2022 · 6 days · 21 km away
- 1,216 haChefchaouen إقليم شفشاونAugust 2019 · 7 days · 26 km away
- 920 haChefchaouen إقليم شفشاونAugust 2022 · 4 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chefchaouen fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 17 March 2020 and 18 March 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 127 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Chefchaouen (127 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Chefchaouen and came within 10.6 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 12.0 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 1, class Very low.
- 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 · 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. No 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.