Mongiuffi Melia fire, July 2018 Mongiuffi Melia
The fire started on 23 July 2018 in Mongiuffi Melia, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 599 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 8th largest in Messina since 2016 (of 70 with a page). Number 4 in Italy in 2018, of 30.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 599ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 23 Jul 2018 – 26 Jul 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 23 Jul
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 11
- in a single hotspot: 31 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 27MW
- 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 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 58 ha in 2016, 20 ha in 2017.
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
-
600 ha reached on 23 Jul25 %
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
- Broadleaved forest38 %
- Other natural land29 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub20 %
- Agricultural areas13 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 37 %
- ZEPA + LIC Bacino del Torrente Letojanni ITA030004
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Jul | 26.3 °C | 49 % | 58 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 24 Jul | 23.3 °C | 61 % | 38 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 7 |
| 25 Jul | 24.9 °C | 54 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 26 Jul | 24.8 °C | 52 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 27 Jul after | 24.9 °C | 56 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 28 Jul after | 25.0 °C | 56 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 29 Jul after | 25.4 °C | 54 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 30 Jul after | 25.4 °C | 59 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 31 Jul after | 26.2 °C | 61 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 1 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 58 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 2 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 57 % | 26 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 3 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 54 % | 26 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 13 |
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 July 2018 the air beside the fire reached 21 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 · 11Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mongiuffi Melia fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 July 2018 to 26 July 2018 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 July 2018 to 24 July 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 599 hectares (6.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mongiuffi Melia (600 ha, 25 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Mongiuffi Melia and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 26.3 °C, humidity dropped to 49 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
- 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 July 2018 to 24 July 2018. 11 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.