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Cherchell fire, July 2021 Cherchell

Out · last detection 6 Jul 2021, 01:35 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2021 in Cherchell, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 150 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 46th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 66 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.

Burnt area
150ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
4 Jul 2021 – 6 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
4 Jul
2021
Heat detections
18
in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Jul 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul6 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

46

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
38km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 13 Jul.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 38 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Cherchell where it started
    150 ha reached on 4 Jul
    1.2 %

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 forest69 %
  • Other natural land29 %
  • Agricultural areas2.0 %

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)
4 Jul 33.2 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Jul 32.8 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Jul 33.7 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Jul after 31.5 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jul after 27.1 °C 67 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Jul after 28.4 °C 67 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Jul after 31.2 °C 54 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
11 Jul after 36.9 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.5 mm High 37
12 Jul after 36.5 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 47
13 Jul after 30.9 °C 30 % 57 km/h 2.1 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jun 2021
After · 13 Jul 2021

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 6 July 2021 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1044 µg/m³
23456789
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 · 18Every 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 4 July 2021 and 6 July 2021: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 150 hectares (1.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cherchell (150 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °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 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.