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DZ · Algeria · –

Ouled Antar fire, 27 July 2020 Ouled Antar

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2020, 13:45 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2020 in Ouled Antar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 213 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 33th largest in Médéa since 2016 (of 55 with a page). Number 136 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ouled Hellal · 2020Ouled Hellal · 2017Ouled Antar · 2017Ouled Hellal · 2017

Burnt area
213ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
27 Jul 2020 – 28 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
27 Jul
2020
Heat detections
16
in a single hotspot: 157 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul28 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 2020 · 1,099 MW · 16

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
42km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Ouled Antar where it started
    213 ha reached on 27 Jul
    1.0 %

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

  • Mixed forest51 %
  • Other natural land47 %
  • Agricultural areas1.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)

Started with Very dry air: 40 % of the area in Algeria

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
27 Jul 39.9 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Jul 39.1 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Jul after 39.4 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 45
30 Jul after 39.1 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Jul after 38.8 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Aug after 38.3 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 50
2 Aug after 39.5 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Aug after 36.7 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Aug after 32.0 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Aug after 32.8 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 34.6 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Aug after 35.6 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 53.9, a minimum humidity of 14% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 42.

FWI at the start 53.9
Minimum humidity 14 %
Days without rain 4
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Ouled Hellal fire, July 2020
2,014 ha 16 days FWI 53.0 Min. humidity 13 % 17 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 22 Jul.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

2 days
median duration
291 ha
median area
14 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.3 mm
rain at the end (median; 29 of 42 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (213 ha against a median of 291 ha) and lasted 2 days, against 2 days.

In 13 of 42, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.3 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
42km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 28 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 29 of 42, with a median of 1.3 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jul 2020
After · 4 Aug 2020

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 29 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1035 µg/m³
25 Jul27 Jul29 Jul31 Jul
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 · 16Every 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 Algeria

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ouled Antar fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 27 July 2020 and 28 July 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 213 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ouled Antar (213 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 42. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 291 ha; 14 % went past 1,000 ha. In 13 of 42, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.3 mm.

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: 14 · 1021 · 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 With cross-checks and a citable version

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 14 · 1021.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 16 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.