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Lentini fire, June 2021 Lentini

Out · last measured on 14 Jun 2021

The fire started on 14 June 2021 in Lentini, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 105 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 56th largest in Siracusa since 2016 (of 57 with a page). Number 283 in Italy in 2021, of 291.

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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
105ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
14 Jun 2021 – 14 Jun 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Jun
2021
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

28°high
35km/h · peak gust
42%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 33 ha in 2016, 51 ha in 2018, 63 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 88 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Lentini 21,646 inhabitants · 12.5 km from the centre where it started
    105 ha
    0.5 %

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

  • Other natural land96 %
  • Agricultural areas3.8 %

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)
14 Jun 27.6 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
15 Jun after 24.0 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Jun after 28.0 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Jun after 28.5 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Jun after 30.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Jun after 32.6 °C 28 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Jun after 34.6 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Jun after 38.8 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Jun after 40.0 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Jun after 42.3 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Jun after 41.1 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jun 2021
After · 21 Jun 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 June 2021 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1022 µg/m³
121314151617
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 Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lentini fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 14 June 2021 and 14 June 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 105 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lentini (105 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Lentini and came within 12.5 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 27.6 °C, humidity dropped to 42 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, 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.

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.

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 112 · 1515.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 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.