Messelmoun fire, June 2020 Messelmoun
The fire started on 11 June 2020 in Messelmoun, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 216 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 31th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 133 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
The power measured by the satellite is low (11.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 216ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 11 Jun 2020 – 14 Jun 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 11 Jun
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 11
- in a single hotspot: 11 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 22MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 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.
What happened to each town
-
Messelmoun where it started216 ha reached on 12 Jun1.1 %
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
- Mixed forest86 %
- Other natural land14 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Jun | 25.2 °C | 39 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 12 Jun | 23.9 °C | 44 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 13 Jun | 21.7 °C | 53 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 14 Jun | 22.6 °C | 46 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 15 Jun after | 24.7 °C | 42 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 Jun after | 24.4 °C | 40 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Jun after | 24.3 °C | 53 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 18 Jun after | 23.8 °C | 51 % | 37 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 19 Jun after | 22.6 °C | 60 % | 30 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 20 Jun after | 25.2 °C | 48 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 21 Jun after | 26.5 °C | 38 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 22 Jun after | 26.4 °C | 40 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 23 Jun after | 27.2 °C | 38 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 24 Jun after | 26.8 °C | 46 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 13 June 2020 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 11Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,093 haMesselmounAugust 2022 · 2 days · 3 km away
- 3,363 haEl Amra العامرةAugust 2021 · 5 days · 8 km away
- 1,368 haGouraya قورايةNovember 2020 · 1 day · 13 km away
- 1,209 haMesselmoun25 July 2020 · 5 days · 16 km away
- 2,102 haMesselmounNovember 2025 · 2 days · 19 km away
- 1,022 haAribJuly 2017 · 4 days · 21 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Messelmoun fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 11 June 2020 and 14 June 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 216 hectares (2.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Messelmoun (216 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.2 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
- 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 · 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 11 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.
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.