Faucon fire, August 2020 Faucon, Entrechaux
The fire started on 15 August 2020 in Faucon, France, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 128 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
Number 13 in France in 2020, of 18.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 128ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 15 Aug 2020 – 16 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 15 Aug
- 2020
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day 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
-
119 ha14 %
-
Entrechaux 1,177 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the town8 ha0.6 %
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
- Coniferous forest77 %
- Agricultural areas18 %
- Mixed forest4.8 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Official record
According to BDIFF, a fire of 134 ha was recorded in Faucon on 15 August 2020 (the satellite measured 128 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.
- Faucon 15 August 2020 · 15:00 134 ha
BDIFF (Base de Données sur les Incendies de Forêts en France). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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 Aug | 33.0 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Aug | 29.7 °C | 50 % | 36 km/h | 4.6 mm | Very low 5 |
| 17 Aug after | 27.4 °C | 37 % | 38 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 18 Aug after | 29.1 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 19 Aug after | 31.7 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 20 Aug after | 32.2 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 21 Aug after | 33.7 °C | 32 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 22 Aug after | 31.1 °C | 39 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 23 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 36 % | 72 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 24 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 29 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 25 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 13 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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)
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Faucon fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 15 August 2020 and 16 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 128 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Faucon (119 ha, 14 %); Entrechaux (8 ha, 0.6 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.9 km of Faucon. 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 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 36 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 France (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: 112 · 18
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with BDIFF: 134 official ha against 128 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution 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.