Monreale fire, 24 July 2023 Palermo, Monreale, Torretta
The fire started on 24 July 2023 in Monreale, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,728 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 7 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Palermo since 2016 (of 179 with a page). The largest in Italy in 2023, of 207.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,728ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 24 Jul 2023 – 26 Jul 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 7
- municipalities
- Started on
- 24 Jul
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 164
- in a single hotspot: 168 MW
- Danger at start
- 54
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- 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 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 4 Aug.
This area had burned before
17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 40 ha in 2017, 133 ha in 2019, 460 ha in 2020, 19 ha in 2022.
- 277 ha Palermo fire, May 2020 356 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 35 ha Torretta fire, July 2017 123 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Monreale fire, September 2017 106 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
-
Palermo 630,167 inhabitants · 5.8 km from the centre2,058 ha reached on 25 Jul13 %
-
Monreale where it started1,171 ha reached on 24 Jul2.2 %
-
Torretta 4,278 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre376 ha reached on 25 Jul15 %
-
Isola delle Femmine 7,041 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the centre91 ha26 %
-
Capaci 11,339 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre30 ha4.8 %
-
10 ha reached on 25 Jul0.8 %
-
Montelepre 5,742 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre0 ha0.0 %
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
- Sclerophyllous scrub29 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland23 %
- Other natural land18 %
- Coniferous forest15 %
- Artificial surfaces12 %
- Agricultural areas3.4 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 63 %
- LIC Fondali di Isola delle Femmine - Capo Gallo ITA020047
- ZEPA Monte Pecoraro e Pizzo Cirina ITA020049
- LIC Raffo Rosso, Monte Cuccio e Vallone Sagana ITA020023
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 41 hectares of built-up land and about 3,300 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Jul | 40.0 °C | 11 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 25 Jul | 38.5 °C | 23 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 26 Jul | 28.5 °C | 39 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 27 Jul after | 28.2 °C | 41 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 28 Jul after | 31.3 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 29 Jul after | 30.1 °C | 54 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 30 Jul after | 32.3 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 31 Jul after | 31.8 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 1 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 38 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 2 Aug after | 30.3 °C | 39 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Aug after | 31.1 °C | 30 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 4 Aug after | 32.0 °C | 33 % | 39 km/h | 5.7 mm | Low 10 |
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 26 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 2.0 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 · 164Every 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 Monreale fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 24 July 2023 and 26 July 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 3,728 hectares (37.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 7 municipalities: Palermo (2,058 ha, 13 %); Monreale (1,171 ha, 2.2 %); Torretta (376 ha, 15 %); Isola delle Femmine (91 ha, 26 %); Capaci (30 ha, 4.8 %); Giardinello (10 ha, 0.8 %); Montelepre (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 0.6 km of the centre of Isola delle Femmine, 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 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, class Extreme.
- 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 164 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.