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Cherchell fire, August 2020 Cherchell

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2020, 13:46 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2020 in Cherchell, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 478 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 53 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
478ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
11 Aug 2020 – 12 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
11 Aug
2020
Heat detections
37
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Energy released
917MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug12 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1112

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
37km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 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
    479 ha reached on 11 Aug
    3.9 %

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 forest70 %
  • Other natural land28 %
  • Agricultural areas1.5 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.0 %

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)
11 Aug 33.7 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Aug 30.6 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Aug after 29.5 °C 57 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Aug after 30.5 °C 53 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
15 Aug after 29.2 °C 64 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
16 Aug after 30.4 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
17 Aug after 29.4 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Aug after 28.6 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Aug after 31.0 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Aug after 30.9 °C 53 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Aug after 30.8 °C 61 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Aug after 31.1 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2020
After · 19 Aug 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 13 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1064 µg/m³
9101112131415
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 · 37Every 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 11 August 2020 and 12 August 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 478 hectares (4.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cherchell (479 ha, 3.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.