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Polizzi Generosa fire, July 2022 Polizzi Generosa, Castellana Sicula

Out · last measured on 6 Jul 2022

The fire started on 6 July 2022 in Polizzi Generosa, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 876 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 25th largest in Palermo since 2016 (of 178 with a page). Number 4 in Italy in 2022, of 161.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Polizzi Generosa · 2020Resuttano · 2026Polizzi Generosa · 2021Aliminusa · 2023

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
876ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
6 Jul 2022 – 6 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Jul
2022
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

35°high
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 137 ha in 2019, 29 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (8.8 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. Polizzi Generosa 2,908 inhabitants · 11.2 km from the centre where it started
    529 ha
    3.9 %
  2. Castellana Sicula
    347 ha
    4.8 %

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 areas92 %
  • Other natural land7.7 %

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)
6 Jul 34.9 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Jul after 34.7 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 54
8 Jul after 29.9 °C 30 % 53 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 49
9 Jul after 25.8 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Jul after 27.0 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul after 28.6 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
12 Jul after 30.0 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Jul after 29.6 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Jul after 28.3 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jul after 29.6 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Jul after 32.7 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Jun 2022
After · 13 Jul 2022

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 2022 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1041 µg/m³
456789
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Polizzi Generosa fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 6 July 2022 and 6 July 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 876 hectares (8.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Polizzi Generosa (529 ha, 3.9 %); Castellana Sicula (347 ha, 4.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Polizzi Generosa and came within 11.2 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 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 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 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. No 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.