Fire near Sambuca di Sicilia (IT)

37.62°N, 13.04°E · first detected on 20 July at 13:25

What the satellites measured

This fire was tracked from 20 July at 13:25 to 23 July at 13:34, that is 3 days, through 136 satellite detections. The detected extent reaches 1,777 ha.

Detected extent: 1,777 ha
Cumulative power: 2,094 MW
Peak power: 113 MW
Detections: 136

“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 Sambuca di Sicilia (IT), 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

Sambuca di Sicilia (IT) 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.

Sambuca di Sicilia (IT) seen by Sentinel-2 on 20 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
12 August at 14:55	2 MW	1	N20
1 August at 15:01	6 MW	2	N20
1 August at 14:42	4 MW	1	N
23 July at 13:34	15 MW	1	N21
23 July at 03:07	2 MW	1	N20
21 July at 14:49	12 MW	1	N
21 July at 14:12	56 MW	4	N21
21 July at 13:25	123 MW	6	N20
21 July at 13:08	94 MW	5	N
21 July at 10:11	101 MW	4	Terra
21 July at 05:34	57 MW	3	Aqua
21 July at 03:45	73 MW	14	N20
21 July at 03:26	167 MW	28	N
21 July at 02:52	129 MW	24	N21
21 July at 02:07	82 MW	16	N20
20 July at 22:14	271 MW	4	Terra
20 July at 20:36	46 MW	1	Terra
20 July at 15:08	723 MW	13	N
20 July at 14:32	65 MW	6	N21
20 July at 13:47	69 MW	3	N20
20 July at 13:25	9 MW	2	N

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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