Sky News' Data and Forensics Unit has tracked the movement of the fires over Rhodes this past week.

Satellite data from NASA shows that wildfires had been burning for several days beforehand, but spread rapidly over the weekend as winds picked up.

Monitoring from the Copernicus Emergency Management Service shows burnt areas on the island increased by 439% from around 6.6 square miles on Thursday to around 35.4 square miles on Sunday.

How drought made Rhodes vulnerable to wildfires

Conditions were exceptionally dry in the weeks preceding the fire, satellite data shows. Most of the island has not seen any rain in more than seven weeks.

By late June, satellites were picking up dangerous levels of drought in central Rhodes. European monitors began detecting dangerously low levels of moisture in the small logs and compact layers of rotting pine needles that cover much of the mountainsides.

By 10 July, one week before the fire, the drought had reached deeper into the soil, drying out larger logs and deeper layers of composted needles and twigs.

How winds caused the spread

Had the wind not changed direction, those fires may have petered out. Gentle breezes, blowing both east and west, helped keep the fire contained to a small part of central Rhodes last week.

"It had been confined to hilly terrain and hadn't been spreading very far Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and that's because the wind speeds were quite low," says Dr Thomas Smith, an associate professor in environmental geography at the London School of Economics.

"I can imagine the winds were controlled by the terrain only because it wasn't very strong and the terrain is quite hilly, so you tend to get very localised winds. But when you get a big gust or a big change in the wind speed and a consistent direction, which is what happened on Saturday, that's when the fire can take off."

On Saturday, the eastward winds which had been brewing for days suddenly gained momentum.

When the winds picked up on Saturday, reaching more than 35km per hour, they carried burning foliage across the mountain tops, spreading the fire for miles.

Satellite data from the European Forest Fire Information System shows nearly 40,000 hectares (154 square miles) of Greece have been affected so far this year.

More has been burnt so far this year than in any full year since 2009, except for 2021. The area burnt so far is more than three times what it was at this point in 2021.

"I think the current situation doesn’t look good," says Dr Smith of the London School of Economics.

"The conditions that were in Rhodes on Saturday are replicated across lots of other places. So, it just takes the ignition and I expect we'll see some more fires like the one on Rhodes.

"The main areas of concern are Sicily, the south-eastern region of Italy, mainland Sardinia, the southwestern coast of Turkey, where there are lots of resort hotels, and then some of the other Greek islands and mainland Greece as well.

"They look to be all primed and ready for extreme fire behaviour."

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.