Burned area
satellite only379ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 26 January 2022
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
SY · Syria ·
Ras Al Ain fire, 11 October 2020 Ras Al Ain
Out · last detection 11 Oct 2020, 23:59 UTC
The fire started on 11 October 2020 in Ras Al Ain, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 379 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 30th largest in Al-Hasakeh since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 18 in Syria in 2020, of 23.
The power measured by the satellite is low (4.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only1day
11 Oct 2020 to 11 Oct 2020: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 11 Oct 2020, 23:59 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only11 Oct 2020
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 11 Oct 2020
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only2
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 4 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 11 Oct 2020 – 11 Oct 2020
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only4MW
Total radiative power on 11 October 2020; hotspots that day: 2.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 11 Oct 2020
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model56.8FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 11 Oct 2020, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model31.4°C · 11% RH
High of 31.4 °C and minimum humidity of 11% on 11 October 2020; gusts of 23 km/h on 11 October 2020.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 11 Oct 2020 – 11 Oct 2020
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 379 ha
- Dates
- 11 Oct 2020 – 11 Oct 2020
- Name
- Ras Al Ain
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/ras-al-ain-2020-10-2?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire ras-al-ain-2020-10-2.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-10-11 | 2 | 4 | 31.4 | 15.8 | 11 | 10 | 23 | 0 | 56.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2020-10-12 | 0 | 0 | 32.8 | 16.7 | 11 | 10.9 | 23.4 | 0 | 53.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-10-13 | 0 | 0 | 34.2 | 16.5 | 9 | 11.4 | 24.1 | 0 | 60.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-10-14 | 0 | 0 | 32.7 | 18.7 | 13 | 8.8 | 19.4 | 0 | 53.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-10-15 | 0 | 0 | 32.8 | 17.4 | 15 | 11.2 | 18.4 | 0 | 50.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-10-16 | 0 | 0 | 32.3 | 17.6 | 19 | 13 | 21.6 | 0 | 52.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-10-17 | 0 | 0 | 30.8 | 16.5 | 19 | 10.6 | 21.6 | 0 | 47.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-10-18 | 0 | 0 | 30.1 | 17.2 | 20 | 9.4 | 20.2 | 0 | 49.4 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-10-19 | 0 | 0 | 30.8 | 15.9 | 19 | 10 | 18.7 | 0 | 45.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-10-20 | 0 | 0 | 31.5 | 17.5 | 22 | 13.2 | 25.2 | 0 | 52.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-10-21 | 0 | 0 | 31.9 | 18.2 | 19 | 11.2 | 20.5 | 0 | 40.6 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 379ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 11 Oct 2020 – 11 Oct 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 11 Oct
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 2
- in a single hotspot: 4 MW
- Danger at start
- 57
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 4MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
11 Oct11 Oct
How it evolved, day by day
11 Oct 2020 · 4 MW · 2
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
31°high
23km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 195 ha in 2019.
What happened to each town
-
Ras Al Ain where it started380 ha reached on 11 Oct0.1 %
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 areas100 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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 Extreme FWI: 61 % of the area in Syria Very dry air: 52 % of the area in Syria 60 days without rain: 9.4 % of the area in Syria
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Oct | 31.4 °C | 11 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 12 Oct after | 32.8 °C | 11 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 13 Oct after | 34.2 °C | 9 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 14 Oct after | 32.7 °C | 13 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 15 Oct after | 32.8 °C | 15 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 16 Oct after | 32.3 °C | 19 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 17 Oct after | 30.8 °C | 19 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Oct after | 30.1 °C | 20 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 19 Oct after | 30.8 °C | 19 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 20 Oct after | 31.5 °C | 22 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 21 Oct after | 31.9 °C | 19 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 56.8, a minimum humidity of 11% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 26.
FWI at the start
56.8
Minimum humidity
11 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Ras Al Ain fire, 11 October 2020
379 ha
1 day
FWI 56.8
Min. humidity 11 %
Suluk fire, August 2019
118 ha
1 day
FWI 58.3
Min. humidity 11 %
33 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Ras Al Ain fire, September 2019
156 ha
7 days
FWI 55.4
Min. humidity 14 %
11 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Ras Al Ain fire, August 2019
372 ha
3 days
FWI 52.8
Min. humidity 10 %
6 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Lice fire, July 2025
110 ha
1 day
FWI 56.8
Min. humidity 10 %
205 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Kulp fire, August 2018
183 ha
2 days
FWI 56.7
Min. humidity 12 %
218 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 2 days
- median duration
- 200 ha
- median area
- 8 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 5.8 mm
- rain at the end (median; 2 of 26 had it)
It was 1.9 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 1 day, against 2 days.
Only 5 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 24 of 26, 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 5.8 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
23km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 11 Oct, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 2 of 26, with a median of 5.8 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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 4 Oct 2020
After · 18 Oct 2020
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 2Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,301 haRas Al Ain18 June 2019 · 1 day · 2 km away
- 763 haRas Al Ain30 August 2019 · 5 days · 6 km away
- 372 haRas Al Ain9 August 2019 · 3 days · 6 km away
- 432 haRas Al Ain1 July 2019 · 1 day · 8 km away
- 1,498 haRas Al Ain23 June 2019 · 1 day · 13 km away
- 1,071 haRas Al Ain2 July 2019 · 6 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ras Al Ain fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 11 October 2020 and 11 October 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 379 hectares (3.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ras Al Ain (380 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Syria (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: 26. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 200 ha; 8 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 5 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 24 of 26, 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 5.8 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.