Oumache fire, 6 August 2026 أوماش · Oumache
The fire started on 6 August 2026 in Oumache, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 661 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
Number 75 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
- Burnt area
- 661ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 6 Aug 2026 – 6 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 6 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 52
- in a single hotspot: 55 MW
- Danger at start
- 66
- Extreme · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 465 ha in 2019.
What happened to each town
-
663 ha reached on 12 Aug0.8 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Agricultural areas95 %
- Mixed forest3.0 %
- Other natural land1.5 %
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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Aug | 44.0 °C | 12 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 7 Aug after | 41.4 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 8 Aug after | 41.3 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 9 Aug after | 43.7 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 10 Aug after | 43.2 °C | 16 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 11 Aug after | 42.8 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 12 Aug after | 41.6 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 13 Aug after | 43.6 °C | 11 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 14 Aug after | 42.0 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 15 Aug after | 41.2 °C | 20 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 16 Aug after | 42.0 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 62 |
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 2026 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 · 52Every 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 Oumache fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 6 August 2026 and 6 August 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 661 hectares (6.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Oumache (663 ha, 0.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 12.4 km of Oumache. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 44.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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.
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
Satellite cross-check
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
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.