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Messelmoun fire, August 2023 Messelmoun, El Amra

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2023, 14:00 UTC

The fire started on 13 August 2023 in Messelmoun, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 204 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 35th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 51 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Messelmoun · 2018Messelmoun · 2022Messelmoun · 2022El Amra · 2021

Burnt area
204ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
13 Aug 2023 – 16 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
13 Aug
2023
Heat detections
20
in a single hotspot: 87 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
97MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Aug16 Aug
15 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

13 Aug 2023 · 228 MW · 4 14 Aug 2023 · 33 MW · 11 15 Aug 2023 · 29 MW · 5
13 Aug 14 Aug 15 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
35km/h · peak gust
43%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 45 ha in 2018, 3 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Messelmoun where it started
    205 ha reached on 13 Aug
    1.0 %
  2. El Amra العامرة 31,073 inhabitants · 13.7 km from the centre
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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 forest81 %
  • Other natural land19 %

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)
13 Aug 27.3 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Aug 28.3 °C 44 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
15 Aug 28.6 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Aug 30.2 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Aug after 28.8 °C 50 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Aug after 29.8 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Aug after 29.7 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Aug after 27.8 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Aug after 26.6 °C 56 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug after 27.8 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Aug after 29.3 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Aug after 28.1 °C 47 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Aug after 27.3 °C 45 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Aug 2023
After · 23 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 15 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1052 µg/m³
Optical depth0.35
1112131415161718
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 · 20Every 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 Messelmoun fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 August 2023 to 16 August 2023 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 August 2023 to 15 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 204 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Messelmoun (205 ha, 1.0 %); El Amra (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 13.7 km of the centre of El Amra, 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 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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.

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 14 · 1021.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 August 2023 to 15 August 2023. 20 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 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.