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Lecrín fire, January 2022 Lecrín

Out · last detection 29 Jan 2022, 13:15 UTC

The fire started on 29 January 2022 in Lecrín, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 143 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 29 January 2022 at 11:25 and declared extinguished on 30 January 2022.

It is the 9th largest in Granada since 2016 (of 12 with a page). Number 130 in Spain in 2022, of 192.

Compare with…
Burnt area
143ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
29 Jan 2022 – 29 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Jan
2022
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
148MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jan29 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jan 2022 · 148 MW · 3

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

The weather it burned in

13°high
40km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.5 mm on 6 Feb.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Lecrín 2,244 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the centre where it started
    144 ha reached on 29 Jan
    3.5 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland86 %
  • Other natural land9.6 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub2.0 %
  • Agricultural areas2.0 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

Official record

According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 29 January 2022 and burned 129 ha (the satellite measured 143 ha).

MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). 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)
29 Jan 12.8 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
30 Jan after 14.3 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
31 Jan after 15.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
1 Feb after 12.1 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
2 Feb after 17.3 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
3 Feb after 16.8 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
4 Feb after 16.0 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm Low 10
5 Feb after 11.8 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.5 mm Low 7
6 Feb after 9.8 °C 77 % 25 km/h 5.5 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jan 2022
After · 5 Feb 2022

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 30 January 2022 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1059 µg/m³
27282930311
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 · 3Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Spain ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lecrín fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 29 January 2022 and 29 January 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 29 January 2022 at 11:25 and declared extinguished on 30 January 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 143 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lecrín (144 ha, 3.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Lecrín and came within 3.3 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 12.8 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, class Very low.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 129 official ha against 143 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.