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IL · Israel · –

Rehovot fire, August 2021 Rehovot

Out · last detection 7 Aug 2021, 23:36 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2021 in Rehovot, Israel, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 137 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 13 in Israel in 2021, of 14.

Burnt area
137ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
4 Aug 2021 – 7 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
subdistricts
Started on
4 Aug
2021
Heat detections
14
in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
62MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug7 Aug
7 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

5 Aug 2021 · 13 MW · 2 6 Aug 2021 · 14 MW · 4 7 Aug 2021 · 160 MW · 8
5 Aug 6 Aug 7 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
38km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 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. Rehovot where it started
    137 ha reached on 5 Aug
    0.4 %

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

  • Other natural land68 %
  • Mixed forest17 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
4 Aug 33.7 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Aug 34.4 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Aug 34.6 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Aug 33.9 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Aug after 31.4 °C 58 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
9 Aug after 31.8 °C 56 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Aug after 31.8 °C 55 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Aug after 31.9 °C 57 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Aug after 32.4 °C 55 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Aug after 32.1 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Aug after 31.7 °C 55 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Aug after 32.2 °C 53 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Aug after 31.7 °C 52 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Aug after 31.3 °C 56 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 30.0, a minimum humidity of 43% and 10 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 17.

FWI at the start 30.0
Minimum humidity 43 %
Days without rain 10
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Petah Tiqwa fire, June 2024
322 ha 1 day FWI 25.4 Min. humidity 44 % 32 km away, in 2024

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

2 days
median duration
199 ha
median area
0 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.4 mm
rain at the end (median; 4 of 17 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (137 ha against a median of 199 ha) and lasted 4 days, against 2 days.

In 13 of 17, 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 2.4 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
38km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 7 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 4 of 17, with a median of 2.4 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 · 28 Jul 2021
After · 14 Aug 2021

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 · 14Every 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 Israel

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Rehovot fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 4 August 2021 and 7 August 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 137 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Rehovot (137 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Israel (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: 17. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 199 ha; 0 % went past 1,000 ha. In 13 of 17, 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 2.4 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: 102 · 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.

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 102.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 14 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.

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 ADM2 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.