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Honaine fire, November 2020 هنين · Honaine

Out · last measured on 7 Nov 2020

The fire started on 7 November 2020 in Honaine, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 258 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 113 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

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
258ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
7 Nov 2020 – 7 Nov 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
7 Nov
2020
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

27°high
76km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 14 Nov.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Honaine هنين 5,408 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the town where it started
    258 ha
    4.1 %

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 forest92 %
  • Other natural land4.7 %
  • Other land cover2.0 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.2 %

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)
7 Nov 27.1 °C 27 % 76 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
8 Nov after 22.7 °C 58 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
9 Nov after 22.3 °C 64 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
10 Nov after 21.4 °C 58 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
11 Nov after 22.4 °C 56 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Nov after 22.5 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
13 Nov after 23.9 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Nov after 22.7 °C 56 % 22 km/h 1.0 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Oct 2020
After · 14 Nov 2020

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 November 2020 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak48 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1094 µg/m³
5678910
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Honaine fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 7 November 2020 and 7 November 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 258 hectares (2.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Honaine (258 ha, 4.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.8 km of Honaine. 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 27.1 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 76 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.