Niozelles fire, August 2022 Niozelles, Villeneuve
The fire started on 5 August 2022 in Niozelles, France, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 250 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
Number 25 in France in 2022, of 49.
Compare with…
Suggestions: La Tour-d'Aigues · 2017
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 250ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 5 Aug 2022 – 5 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 5 Aug
- 2022
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 6 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
176 ha17 %
-
Villeneuve 4,360 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre74 ha2.9 %
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
- Mixed forest37 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland26 %
- Agricultural areas19 %
- Other natural land9.9 %
- Coniferous forest7.1 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Official record
According to BDIFF, a fire of 237 ha was recorded in Villeneuve on 2 August 2022 (the satellite measured 250 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.
- Villeneuve 2 August 2022 · 15:55 237 ha · cause: negligence
BDIFF (Base de Données sur les Incendies de Forêts en France). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Aug | 33.6 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 1.6 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 1.7 mm | High 26 |
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 5 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 12 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)
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Niozelles fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 5 August 2022 and 5 August 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 250 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Niozelles (176 ha, 17 %); Villeneuve (74 ha, 2.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Niozelles 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 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18 · 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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with BDIFF: 237 official ha against 250 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0). 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.