Monte Sant'Angelo fire, July 2023 Monte Sant'Angelo, Manfredonia
The fire started on 25 July 2023 in Monte Sant'Angelo, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 584 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Foggia since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 32 in Italy in 2023, of 207.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 584ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 25 Jul 2023 – 25 Jul 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 25 Jul
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 9
- in a single hotspot: 39 MW
- Danger at start
- 52
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 217MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
25 Jul 2023 · 217 MW · 9
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 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
574 ha reached on 25 Jul2.4 %
-
Manfredonia 53,902 inhabitants · 7.2 km from the centre11 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
- Other natural land63 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland14 %
- Mixed forest12 %
- Agricultural areas9.6 %
- Broadleaved forest1.4 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 2 %
- LIC Bosco Quarto - Monte Spigno IT9110030
- ZEPA Promontorio del Gargano IT9110039
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Jul | 35.4 °C | 26 % | 63 km/h | 0.4 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 26 Jul after | 26.4 °C | 38 % | 48 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very high 47 |
| 27 Jul after | 24.2 °C | 35 % | 44 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Jul after | 27.2 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 29 Jul after | 26.8 °C | 47 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 30 Jul after | 28.2 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 22 |
| 31 Jul after | 26.6 °C | 52 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 23 |
| 1 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 47 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 2 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 46 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Aug after | 28.9 °C | 47 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 4 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 40 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
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 25 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 18 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 · 9Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 494 haSan Giovanni Rotondo8 July 2025 · 1 day · 4 km away
- 1,173 haSan Giovanni Rotondo21 July 2025 · 6 days · 14 km away
- 804 haManfredoniaJuly 2025 · 5 days · 17 km away
- 662 haCagnano VaranoJuly 2017 · 2 days · 18 km away
- 473 haManfredonia11 July 2017 · 2 days · 18 km away
- 422 haManfredoniaJune 2026 · 1 day · 18 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Monte Sant'Angelo fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 25 July 2023 and 25 July 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 584 hectares (5.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Monte Sant'Angelo (574 ha, 2.4 %); Manfredonia (11 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Monte Sant'Angelo and came within 6.1 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 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 9 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.