Misilmeri fire, September 2022 Misilmeri, Santa Cristina Gela, Belmonte Mezzagno
The fire started on 4 September 2022 in Misilmeri, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 937 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 22th largest in Palermo since 2016 (of 178 with a page). Number 3 in Italy in 2022, of 161.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 937ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 4 Sept 2022 – 5 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Sept
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 31 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 120MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 7 Sept.
This area had burned before
50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 289 ha in 2017, 227 ha in 2020, 49 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 472 ha that had burned before.
- 129 ha Santa Cristina Gela fire, August 2020 134 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 119 ha Misilmeri fire, July 2017 119 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 105 ha Santa Cristina Gela fire, August 2017 256 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 33 ha Misilmeri fire, August 2020 196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Rome boundary: geoBoundaries · ISTAT, National Institute of Statistics (CC BY 3.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
633 ha reached on 4 Sept9.1 %
-
Santa Cristina Gela 1,006 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre219 ha reached on 5 Sept5.7 %
-
Belmonte Mezzagno 10,858 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the centre86 ha reached on 4 Sept2.9 %
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
- Other natural land63 %
- Coniferous forest30 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub3.8 %
- Agricultural areas2.7 %
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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Sept | 30.5 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 5 Sept | 28.6 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 6 Sept after | 29.0 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 7 Sept after | 28.9 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 1.7 mm | Moderate 12 |
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 7 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 16 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 · 23Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,663 haPalermo21 July 2023 · 7 days · 7 km away
- 2,867 haMonreale29 July 2021 · 4 days · 9 km away
- 2,120 haMonreale29 July 2021 · 3 days · 11 km away
- 3,728 haMonreale24 July 2023 · 3 days · 16 km away
- 2,265 haCampofelice di FitaliaJuly 2026 · 2 days · 25 km away
- 1,694 haCampofioritoAugust 2017 · 3 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Misilmeri fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 4 September 2022 and 5 September 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 937 hectares (9.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Misilmeri (633 ha, 9.1 %); Santa Cristina Gela (219 ha, 5.7 %); Belmonte Mezzagno (86 ha, 2.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 3.3 km of the centre of Belmonte Mezzagno, 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 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 41 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 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 · 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. 23 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 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.