Misilmeri fire, September 2023 Misilmeri
The fire started on 21 September 2023 in Misilmeri, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 603 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 34th largest in Palermo since 2016 (of 179 with a page). Number 30 in Italy in 2023, of 207.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 603ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 21 Sept 2023 – 23 Sept 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Sept
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 28
- in a single hotspot: 38 MW
- Danger at start
- 25
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 168MW
- 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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 25 Sept.
This area had burned before
80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 69 ha in 2017, 185 ha in 2018, 248 ha in 2020, 65 ha in 2021, 179 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 484 ha that had burned before.
- 173 ha Misilmeri fire, August 2020 196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 160 ha Misilmeri fire, July 2018 209 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 126 ha Misilmeri fire, July 2022 163 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 46 ha Misilmeri fire, September 2022 937 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 11 ha Belmonte Mezzagno fire, August 2017 322 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10 ha Misilmeri fire, July 2017 119 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
-
603 ha reached on 22 Sept8.7 %
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 land68 %
- Agricultural areas14 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub7.1 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland6.3 %
- Coniferous forest4.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Sept | 28.4 °C | 35 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Sept | 29.5 °C | 39 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 23 Sept | 24.0 °C | 55 % | 32 km/h | 9.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 24 Sept after | 20.4 °C | 52 % | 44 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 8 |
| 25 Sept after | 19.9 °C | 59 % | 34 km/h | 2.9 mm | Very low 4 |
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 23 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 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 · 28Every 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 · 8 km away
- 2,867 haMonreale29 July 2021 · 4 days · 11 km away
- 2,120 haMonreale29 July 2021 · 3 days · 14 km away
- 3,728 haMonreale24 July 2023 · 3 days · 17 km away
- 2,265 haCampofelice di FitaliaJuly 2026 · 2 days · 25 km away
- 1,694 haCampofioritoAugust 2017 · 3 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Misilmeri fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 21 September 2023 and 23 September 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 603 hectares (6.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Misilmeri (603 ha, 8.7 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Misilmeri and came within 2.0 km of its centre. 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 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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. 28 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.