Burned area
satellite only198ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 17 June 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
MA · Morocco ·
Essaouira fire, June 2026 إقليم الصويرة · Essaouira
Out · last detection 15 Jun 2026, 14:01 UTC
The fire started on 15 June 2026 in Essaouira, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 198 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
Number 8 in Morocco in 2026, of 16.
The power measured by the satellite is low (16.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only1day
15 Jun 2026 to 15 Jun 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 15 Jun 2026, 14:01 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only15 Jun 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 15 Jun 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only4
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 16 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 15 Jun 2026 – 15 Jun 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only45MW
Total radiative power on 15 June 2026; hotspots that day: 4.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 15 Jun 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model22.7FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 47.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 15 Jun 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model23.7°C · 69% RH
High of 23.7 °C and minimum humidity of 69% on 15 June 2026; gusts of 40 km/h on 15 June 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 15 Jun 2026 – 15 Jun 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 198 ha
- Dates
- 15 Jun 2026 – 15 Jun 2026
- Name
- Essaouira
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/essaouira-2026-06?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire essaouira-2026-06.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-15 | 4 | 45 | 23.7 | 18.3 | 69 | 26.7 | 39.6 | 0 | 22.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-06-16 | 0 | 0 | 22.9 | 18.3 | 69 | 22.9 | 35.3 | 0 | 22.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2026-06-17 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 18.2 | 74 | 17.8 | 30.6 | 0 | 19.1 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-18 | 0 | 0 | 22.5 | 19.2 | 77 | 17.1 | 29.2 | 0 | 18 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-19 | 0 | 0 | 23.4 | 19.2 | 75 | 19.4 | 31.3 | 0 | 16.8 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-20 | 0 | 0 | 23.8 | 18.4 | 73 | 19.7 | 32 | 0 | 19.6 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-21 | 0 | 0 | 24.2 | 19.5 | 72 | 17.2 | 29.5 | 0 | 18.7 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-22 | 0 | 0 | 24.3 | 19.5 | 72 | 18.1 | 30.6 | 0 | 19.5 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-23 | 0 | 0 | 23.9 | 19.8 | 70 | 17.4 | 28.8 | 0 | 14.3 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-24 | 0 | 0 | 24.2 | 19 | 72 | 19.5 | 32.4 | 0 | 17.1 | moderado | 0 |
| 2026-06-25 | 0 | 0 | 24.7 | 18.2 | 61 | 21.2 | 31.7 | 0 | 20.4 | moderado | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 198ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 1day
- 15 Jun 2026 – 15 Jun 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- provinces
- Started on
- 15 Jun
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 4
- in a single hotspot: 16 MW
- Danger at start
- 23
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 45MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
15 Jun15 Jun
How it evolved, day by day
15 Jun 2026 · 45 MW · 4
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
24°high
40km/h · peak gust
69%lowest humidity
It had gone 47 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
-
199 ha reached on 15 Jun0.0 %
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
- Coniferous forest85 %
- Agricultural areas15 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Jun | 23.7 °C | 69 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 16 Jun after | 22.9 °C | 69 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 17 Jun after | 23.0 °C | 74 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 18 Jun after | 22.5 °C | 77 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 19 Jun after | 23.4 °C | 75 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 20 Jun after | 23.8 °C | 73 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 21 Jun after | 24.2 °C | 72 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 22 Jun after | 24.3 °C | 72 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 23 Jun after | 23.9 °C | 70 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 24 Jun after | 24.2 °C | 72 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 25 Jun after | 24.7 °C | 61 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 8 Jun 2026
After · 22 Jun 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 17 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak10 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.28
13 Jun15 Jun17 Jun
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 · 4Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Essaouira fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (15 June 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 15 June 2026 (1 day from 15 June 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 198 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Essaouira (199 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Essaouira and came within 21.2 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 23.7 °C, humidity dropped to 69 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
- 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.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 4 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 2025, 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.