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El Tarf fire, 31 July 2017 الطارف · El Tarf

Out · last measured on 1 Aug 2017

The fire started on 31 July 2017 in El Tarf, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 187 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 77th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 101 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

Burnt area
187ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
31 Jul 2017 – 1 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
31 Jul
2017
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul1 Aug

The weather it burned in

40°high
34km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 11 Aug.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 29 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. El Tarf الطارف 25,594 inhabitants · 6.2 km from the town where it started
    187 ha reached on 4 Aug
    1.6 %

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 forest64 %
  • Other natural land32 %
  • Agricultural areas4.2 %

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)
31 Jul 39.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Aug 38.7 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Aug after 35.6 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Aug after 38.9 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Aug after 38.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Aug after 34.0 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Aug after 33.9 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Aug after 33.9 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Aug after 37.2 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Aug after 36.0 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Aug after 29.6 °C 64 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Aug after 27.2 °C 54 % 40 km/h 1.9 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2017
After · 8 Aug 2017

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 4 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 157 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak157 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10163 µg/m³
2930311234
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 · 1Every 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 El Tarf fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 July 2017 and 1 August 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 187 hectares (1.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered El Tarf (187 ha, 1.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 6.2 km of El Tarf. 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 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very 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.