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Melbou fire, July 2023 ملبو · Melbou, Ziama Mansouriah

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2023, 02:32 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2023 in Melbou, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,042 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 4 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

Burnt area
3,042ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
23 Jul 2023 – 25 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
23 Jul
2023
Heat detections
45
in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
534MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Jul 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul25 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

232425

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
57km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 28 Jul.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 65 ha in 2017, 117 ha in 2020, 143 ha in 2021, 21 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Melbou ملبو 11,396 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the town where it started
    1,822 ha reached on 23 Jul
    38 %
  2. Ziama Mansouriah زيامة منصورية 12,642 inhabitants · 0.4 km from the town
    1,223 ha reached on 24 Jul
    11 %

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 forest77 %
  • Other natural land21 %
  • Other land cover1.2 %

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)
23 Jul 42.9 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Jul 41.0 °C 19 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
25 Jul 34.7 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Jul after 31.2 °C 59 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Jul after 36.1 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Jul after 35.7 °C 46 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2023
After · 1 Aug 2023

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 25 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 159 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 81: 5.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak159 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10159 µg/m³
Optical depth1.18
2122232425262728
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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Melbou fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 23 July 2023 and 25 July 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,042 hectares (30.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Melbou (1,822 ha, 38 %); Ziama Mansouriah (1,223 ha, 11 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.4 km of Ziama Mansouriah. 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 42.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
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.