Messelmoun fire, September 2020 Messelmoun, Gouraya
The fire started on 12 September 2020 in Messelmoun, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 844 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 7th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 26 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
The power measured by the satellite is low (0.8 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
- 844ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 12 Sept 2020 – 15 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 12 Sept
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 1
- in a single hotspot: 1 MW
- Danger at start
- 16
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
14 Sept 2020 · 1 MW · 1
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. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 25 Sept.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6 ha in 2017.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Messelmoun where it started841 ha reached on 14 Sept4.2 %
-
6 ha0.1 %
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 forest80 %
- Other natural land13 %
- Broadleaved forest6.7 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Sept | 26.0 °C | 46 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 13 Sept | 26.0 °C | 55 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 14 Sept | 27.4 °C | 55 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 15 Sept | 26.5 °C | 56 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 16 Sept after | 27.2 °C | 45 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 17 Sept after | 27.9 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Sept after | 28.4 °C | 43 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 19 Sept after | 26.6 °C | 40 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Sept after | 25.0 °C | 54 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 21 Sept after | 24.3 °C | 43 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 22 Sept after | 25.0 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 23 Sept after | 27.9 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 24 Sept after | 29.3 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 25 Sept after | 27.6 °C | 36 % | 81 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 30 |
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 19 September 2020 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily 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 · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,102 haMesselmounNovember 2025 · 2 days · 3 km away
- 1,368 haGouraya قورايةNovember 2020 · 1 day · 7 km away
- 1,209 haMesselmoun25 July 2020 · 5 days · 10 km away
- 1,093 haMesselmounAugust 2022 · 2 days · 16 km away
- 1,022 haAribJuly 2017 · 4 days · 18 km away
- 3,363 haEl Amra العامرةAugust 2021 · 5 days · 21 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Messelmoun fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 12 September 2020 and 15 September 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 844 hectares (8.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Messelmoun (841 ha, 4.2 %); Gouraya (6 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 7.6 km of the centre of Gouraya, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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.