How long did the Misilmeri fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 23 July 2022 and 23 July 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 163 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Misilmeri (163 ha, 2.4 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.6 km of Misilmeri. 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 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 49 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

IT · Italy · 2022-07-23 → 2022-07-23

Misilmeri fire, July 2022 Misilmeri

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2022, 11:53 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2022 in Misilmeri, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 163 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 129th largest in Palermo since 2016 (of 178 with a page). Number 99 in Italy in 2022, of 161.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 163ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 23 Jul 2022 – 23 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 23 Jul; 2022
Heat detections: 2; in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Energy released: 22MW; sum of detected power

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul23 Jul

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

27°high

27km/h · peak gust

49%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19 ha in 2018, 135 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 141 ha that had burned before.

125 ha Misilmeri fire, August 2020 196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Misilmeri 28,760 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the town where it started

163 ha reached on 23 Jul

2.4 %

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

Other natural land81 %
Sclerophyllous scrub15 %
Scrub and transitional woodland1.8 %
Agricultural areas1.2 %
Coniferous forest0.6 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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	Danger (FWI)
23 Jul	27.0 °C	49 %	27 km/h	High 22
24 Jul after	27.4 °C	48 %	26 km/h	High 23
25 Jul after	27.7 °C	50 %	25 km/h	High 22
26 Jul after	27.0 °C	53 %	26 km/h	High 24
27 Jul after	28.2 °C	47 %	24 km/h	High 23
28 Jul after	27.2 °C	51 %	24 km/h	High 23
29 Jul after	26.7 °C	54 %	27 km/h	High 22
30 Jul after	27.8 °C	53 %	27 km/h	High 21
31 Jul after	26.7 °C	53 %	30 km/h	High 25
1 Aug after	26.3 °C	53 %	28 km/h	High 25
2 Aug after	26.9 °C	46 %	33 km/h	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jul 2022

After · 30 Jul 2022

Before After

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 21 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1022 µg/m³

WHO 15

212223242526

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 · 2Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Misilmeri fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 23 July 2022 and 23 July 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 163 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Misilmeri (163 ha, 2.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.6 km of Misilmeri. 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 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 49 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (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: 112 · 1515

Protezione Civile ↗
Carabinieri Forestali (1515) ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 112 · 1515.

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 ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). 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.

Where it burned