Grisolia fire, August 2021 Grisolia
The fire started on 8 August 2021 in Grisolia, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 134 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 96th largest in Cosenza since 2016 (of 145 with a page). Number 212 in Italy in 2021, of 291.
The power measured by the satellite is low (8.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 134ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 8 Aug 2021 – 8 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 7
- in a single hotspot: 8 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 39MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
8 Aug 2021 · 39 MW · 7
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 16 Aug.
This area had burned before
66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 89 ha in 2017.
What happened to each town
-
134 ha reached on 8 Aug2.6 %
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
- Agricultural areas77 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland23 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Aug | 33.5 °C | 28 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Aug after | 33.5 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Aug after | 35.3 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 39 % | 28 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 25 |
| 14 Aug after | 32.2 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 15 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 37 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 16 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 53 % | 38 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
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 11 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily 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)
Detections table · 7Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 609 haSanta Domenica TalaoSeptember 2025 · 2 days · 10 km away
- 643 haSanta Domenica TalaoJuly 2017 · 8 days · 13 km away
- 538 haSanta Domenica TalaoAugust 2023 · 5 days · 13 km away
- 518 haTortora16 July 2017 · 4 days · 25 km away
- 631 haMorano CalabroJuly 2026 · 7 days · 27 km away
- 1,617 haCastrovillariJuly 2026 · 4 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Grisolia fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2021 and 8 August 2021: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 134 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Grisolia (134 ha, 2.6 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Grisolia and came within 3.7 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 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (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 · 1515 · 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.
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. 7 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.
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 ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). 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.