How long did the Kenitra fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 20 May 2022 and 20 May 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,060 hectares (10.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kenitra (1,067 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 44.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.

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.

MA · Morocco · 2022-05-20 → 2022-05-20

Kenitra fire, May 2022 إقليم القنيطرة · Kenitra

Out · last detection 20 May 2022, 13:33 UTC

The fire started on 20 May 2022 in Kenitra, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,060 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 5 in Morocco in 2022, of 22.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kenitra · 2018 Larache · 2021 Larache · 2016 Larache · 2022

Burnt area: 1,060ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 20 May 2022 – 20 May 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; provinces
Started on: 20 May; 2022
Heat detections: 45; in a single hotspot: 251 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.5GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 May20 May

How it evolved, day by day

20 May 2022 · 2,522 MW · 45

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

44°high

45km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 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.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Kenitra إقليم القنيطرة where it started

1,067 ha reached on 20 May

0.3 %

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

Scrub and transitional woodland30 %
Agricultural areas24 %
Mixed forest24 %
Broadleaved forest22 %

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)
20 May	44.3 °C	7 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 55
21 May after	36.8 °C	12 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
22 May after	24.6 °C	54 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
23 May after	27.0 °C	48 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
24 May after	25.1 °C	52 %	43 km/h	0.3 mm	High 22
25 May after	26.8 °C	37 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 May after	36.2 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 May after	38.7 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
28 May after	31.8 °C	31 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 May after	25.6 °C	46 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 May after	26.4 °C	47 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 May 2022

After · 27 May 2022

Before After

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 20 May 2022 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM10153 µg/m³

WHO 15

181920212223

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 · 45Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Morocco ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kenitra fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 20 May 2022 and 20 May 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,060 hectares (10.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kenitra (1,067 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 44.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 15 · 150.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 45 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned