Fire near Barèges

42.88°N, 0.09°E · first detected on 16 July at 15:01

What the satellites measured

This fire was tracked from 16 July at 15:01 to 20 July at 15:27, that is 4 days, through 68 satellite detections. The detected extent reaches 617 ha.

Detected extent: 617 ha
Cumulative power: 1,123 MW
Peak power: 264 MW
Detections: 68

“Detected extent” is not “burned area”: it is the union of the ground footprints of the satellite pixels, and a 375 m pixel counts in full even when only a forest edge is burning. Compared with press figures it is in practice one and a half to three times the area reported. Detections taken at the edge of the scan swath, too coarse to measure anything at all, are excluded. These figures come from thermal satellite detection and are not an official assessment: only the local fire and civil protection authorities are authoritative.

Replay how the fire spread

The map is centred on this fire and loads only its detections. The timeline below covers the whole fire, from the first satellite pass to the last. “1 h” shows what is burning within an hour of the chosen moment : the map then follows the power curve below and empties when it falls. “12 h” stacks twelve hours , as the home map does, where stacking avoids an empty screen between two satellite passes. Both are true, but they say different things.

The detected extent

Outline of the burned area near Barèges, drawn over satellite imagery — The outline is the union of the ground footprints of every satellite detection of this fire, from the first pass to the last. The background is the EOX cloudless Sentinel-2 mosaic, 2024 vintage: it shows the landscape BEFORE these fires, not the burn scar.

The spread, pass after pass

Barèges seen by Sentinel-2 on 8 July — One image per usable Sentinel-2 pass, on the same framing throughout so that the comparison means something. The satellite comes back every two to five days and clouds rule out some of the passes: the gaps in the series are days without an image, not days without fire.

Barèges seen by Sentinel-2 on 18 July — One image per usable Sentinel-2 pass, on the same framing throughout so that the comparison means something. The satellite comes back every two to five days and clouds rule out some of the passes: the gaps in the series are days without an image, not days without fire.

How the radiative power evolved

One point per satellite pass: the sum of the fire radiative power measured over the fire. This is the curve that says whether the fire eased off or picked up again, which no cumulative figure shows. The window covers 30 days; beyond that, clustering would merge two successive fires in the same place.

Fire dynamics

Loading history…

Satellite passes in detail

Pass	Power	Detections	Sensor
2 August at 22:32	8 MW	1	Terra
2 August at 15:29	9 MW	1	N21
30 July at 15:40	4 MW	1	N20
30 July at 05:02	2 MW	1	N21
30 July at 04:15	4 MW	3	N20
30 July at 03:58	1 MW	1	N
29 July at 15:59	39 MW	6	N20
29 July at 15:04	29 MW	2	N21
29 July at 04:36	2 MW	2	N20
29 July at 04:15	1 MW	1	N
28 July at 15:59	40 MW	2	N
28 July at 15:25	32 MW	2	N21
28 July at 14:38	3 MW	1	N20
20 July at 15:27	11 MW	2	N20
20 July at 15:08	7 MW	1	N
20 July at 14:34	4 MW	1	N21
20 July at 04:04	1 MW	1	N20
19 July at 15:46	34 MW	4	N20
19 July at 14:53	7 MW	1	N21
19 July at 05:08	16 MW	3	N21
19 July at 04:21	6 MW	1	N20
19 July at 04:04	5 MW	4	N
19 July at 03:28	1 MW	1	N21
18 July at 15:46	39 MW	7	N
18 July at 15:10	10 MW	2	N21
18 July at 11:30	16 MW	2	Terra
18 July at 04:43	6 MW	2	N20
18 July at 04:21	4 MW	2	N
18 July at 03:45	4 MW	2	N21
17 July at 16:05	26 MW	3	N
17 July at 15:29	61 MW	4	N21
17 July at 14:44	14 MW	2	N20
17 July at 14:23	6 MW	1	N
17 July at 05:00	6 MW	4	N20
17 July at 04:41	4 MW	3	N
17 July at 04:06	3 MW	3	N21
16 July at 16:44	158 MW	3	Aqua
16 July at 15:48	640 MW	7	N21
16 July at 15:01	37 MW	2	N20

One other fire near Barèges

Separate fires, apart in time or in space, not pieces of this one. A single municipality can have several over one summer, and the forest of Fontainebleau alone covers 172 square kilometres.

28 July to 2 August212 ha

Follow live

The map shows active fires in 3D, with smoke plumes, forecast wind, drop zones and the live position of the Canadair, Dash 8 and Air Tractor aircraft of the French Sécurité civile.

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