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Montemilone fire, July 2025 Montemilone, Minervino Murge

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2025, 01:04 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2025 in Montemilone, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 912 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Potenza since 2016 (of 27 with a page). Number 8 in Italy in 2025, of 216.

The power measured by the satellite is low (4.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Montemilone · 2021Minervino Murge · 2026Minervino Murge · 2026Andria · 2022

Burnt area
912ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
8 Jul 2025 – 8 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
8 Jul
2025
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 4 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
9MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul8 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2025 · 9 MW · 3

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
57km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 151 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (9.1 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Montemilone 1,372 inhabitants · 2.2 km from the centre where it started
    742 ha reached on 8 Jul
    6.5 %
  2. Minervino Murge 8,171 inhabitants · 8.6 km from the centre
    171 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.7 %

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

  • Agricultural areas87 %
  • Other natural land6.4 %
  • Coniferous forest6.1 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.7 %

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)
8 Jul 32.2 °C 28 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jul after 26.3 °C 32 % 58 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
10 Jul after 27.2 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Jul after 28.9 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jul after 32.6 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul after 36.4 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jul after 33.1 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 41
15 Jul after 33.6 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul after 35.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Jul after 34.8 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 45
18 Jul after 32.8 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 1 Jul 2025
After · 15 Jul 2025

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 · Copernicus

On 7 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 8 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak8 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1012 µg/m³
Optical depth0.29
67891011
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 3Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Montemilone fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 July 2025 and 8 July 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 912 hectares (9.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Montemilone (742 ha, 6.5 %); Minervino Murge (171 ha, 0.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Montemilone and came within 2.2 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 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112 · 1515.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.