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Jerusalem fire, August 2021 Jerusalem

Out · last measured on 8 Aug 2021

The fire started on 3 August 2021 in Jerusalem, Israel, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,230 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

The largest in Israel in 2021, of 14.

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
1,230ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
3 Aug 2021 – 8 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
subdistricts
Started on
3 Aug
2021
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
41km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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

  1. Jerusalem where it started
    1,234 ha
    1.9 %

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 forest46 %
  • Coniferous forest31 %
  • Other natural land20 %
  • Artificial surfaces2.0 %
  • Agricultural areas1.1 %

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)
3 Aug 34.4 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Aug 35.1 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Aug 35.7 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Aug 35.8 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Aug 35.3 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Aug 31.9 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Aug after 31.7 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Aug after 31.6 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Aug after 31.8 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
12 Aug after 32.0 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Aug after 32.4 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Aug after 31.7 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Aug after 32.0 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Aug after 31.5 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Aug after 31.0 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Aug after 30.2 °C 42 % 38 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.

Before · 27 Jul 2021
After · 15 Aug 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Israel ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jerusalem fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 3 August 2021 and 8 August 2021: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,230 hectares (12.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Jerusalem (1,234 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Israel (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: 102

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 102.

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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.