Messelmoun fire, August 2022 Messelmoun, Aghbal, Larhat
The fire started on 14 August 2022 in Messelmoun, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,093 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 14 in Algeria in 2022, of 58.
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- Burnt area
- 1,093ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 14 Aug 2022 – 15 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 14 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 76
- in a single hotspot: 209 MW
- Danger at start
- 64
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.9GW
- 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 51 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.
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 started678 ha reached on 14 Aug3.4 %
-
242 ha reached on 14 Aug7.8 %
-
175 ha reached on 14 Aug2.8 %
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 forest75 %
- Other natural land23 %
- Broadleaved forest1.6 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 3.0 hectares of built-up land and about 350 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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 Aug | 40.8 °C | 12 % | 51 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 15 Aug | 33.5 °C | 19 % | 55 km/h | 0.3 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 16 Aug after | 34.9 °C | 18 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 17 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 47 |
| 18 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 19 Aug after | 27.5 °C | 33 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Aug after | 28.5 °C | 28 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Aug after | 32.4 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 22 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 37 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 24 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Aug after | 35.3 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 43 |
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 14 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 18 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 · 76Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,363 haEl Amra العامرةAugust 2021 · 5 days · 11 km away
- 1,368 haGouraya قورايةNovember 2020 · 1 day · 11 km away
- 844 haMesselmounSeptember 2020 · 4 days · 16 km away
- 1,209 haMesselmoun25 July 2020 · 5 days · 17 km away
- 2,102 haMesselmounNovember 2025 · 2 days · 19 km away
- 1,022 haAribJuly 2017 · 4 days · 23 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Messelmoun fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 14 August 2022 and 15 August 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,093 hectares (10.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Messelmoun (678 ha, 3.4 %); Aghbal (242 ha, 7.8 %); Larhat (175 ha, 2.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 1.7 km of the centre of Aghbal, 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 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class 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 · 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. 76 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.