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Taounate fire, August 2016 إقليم تاونات · Taounate

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2016, 13:15 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2016 in Taounate, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 229 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 10th largest in Fez-Meknes since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 5 in Morocco in 2016, of 12.

Burnt area
229ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
8 Aug 2016 – 8 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
1
provinces
Started on
8 Aug
2016
Heat detections
14
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
738MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug8 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

8

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
51km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 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. Taounate إقليم تاونات 122,256 inhabitants where it started
    231 ha reached on 8 Aug
    0.0 %

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

  • Mixed forest93 %
  • Agricultural areas7.4 %

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)
8 Aug 33.2 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Aug after 33.8 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Aug after 32.4 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Aug after 31.8 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug after 32.2 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Aug after 34.0 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Aug after 35.0 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Aug after 33.6 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.7 mm High 32
16 Aug after 31.7 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
17 Aug after 32.4 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Aug after 33.9 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Aug 2016
After · 15 Aug 2016

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 8 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1035 µg/m³
67891011
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 · 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 Morocco ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Taounate fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2016 and 8 August 2016: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 229 hectares (2.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Taounate (231 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Morocco (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: 15 · 150

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
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 15 · 150.

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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.