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Cherchell fire, July 2020 Cherchell

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2020, 02:37 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2020 in Cherchell, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 171 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 38th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 155 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
171ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
20 Jul 2020 – 21 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
20 Jul
2020
Heat detections
14
in a single hotspot: 81 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Energy released
203MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Jul 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul21 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2021

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
32km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Cherchell where it started
    171 ha reached on 20 Jul
    1.4 %

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 forest82 %
  • Other natural land18 %

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)
20 Jul 29.3 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Jul 30.8 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Jul after 31.8 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Jul after 28.5 °C 56 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Jul after 27.7 °C 46 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
25 Jul after 31.5 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Jul after 32.6 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Jul after 33.4 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jul after 32.9 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Jul after 31.8 °C 48 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Jul after 33.7 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
31 Jul after 33.5 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jul 2020
After · 28 Jul 2020

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 22 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1037 µg/m³
18192021222324
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 · 14Every 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 Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cherchell fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 20 July 2020 and 21 July 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 171 hectares (1.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cherchell (171 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
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

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 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.