Fire near Bareilles

What the satellites measured

This fire was tracked from 6 September at 04:04 to 8 September at 15:36, that is 2 days, through 79 satellite detections. The detected extent reaches 516 ha.

Detected extent

516 ha

Cumulative power

668 MW

Peak power, one pixel

49 MW

VIIRS and MODIS detections

79

These four figures cover the polar orbits alone, the ones that measure an area. The pass table below also counts geostationary detections, more frequent but too coarse for geometry, and its power column sums a whole pass where the peak above is that of a single pixel.

“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 detection and are not an official assessment: only the emergency services and the competent authorities are authoritative.

Timeline

Extinguished105 hastarted on 5 September at 09:45 · extinguished on 10 September at 11:10

1. Presumed over10 September at 11:10

   No further news, a day of silence for an active fire, four for a contained one, and no recent satellite detection nearby: the register closed the entry on its own. This is a presumption, not an announcement, and a new report would reopen it.

2. Area revised to 105 ha8 September at 09:46

   Bareilles · Feu de végétation a déjà parcouru plus de 105 hectares · La Semaine des Pyrénées

3. Area revised to 50 ha7 September at 11:20

   Incendie de végétation à Bareilles, déjà 50 hectares partis en fumée · hit-radio

4. First report5 September at 09:45

   Plus de 15 hectares de végétation partis en fumée à la suite d'un incendie toujours actif dans les Hautes-Pyrénées · La Dépêche faits-divers

A "contained" fire is no longer spreading but is not out: crews remain on site and it can flare up again. Statuses and areas come from press reports and official sources, matched automatically; they are not an official record : only the prefecture and the fire service are authoritative. An entry with no news for ten days is closed automatically, and each entry's history keeps track of who announced what, and when.

Replay how the fire spread

The map is framed on this fire and loads only its detections. The timeline below covers the whole known life of the fire, from the first trace, satellite or report, to the last announcement from emergency services, and the ticks on the bar mark those announcements. Detections often stop before containment: a fire stops radiating once it stops spreading, which is exactly when it is declared contained. “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.

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 5 days; beyond that, clustering would merge two successive fires in the same place.

Satellite passes in detail

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