Rice is one of the world’s significant food crops, especially in Egypt. The distribution data of planted and harvested paddy rice fields are essential for food security and the management of water resources. The determined area within agricultural associations is often subjective, expensive, labor intensive, time-consuming, and prone to errors. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the paddy rice areas in the Nile Delta using a new methodology based on satellite data. The rice areas could be classified with good results at the beginning of the 1st flooding period applying the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The temporal profiles of NDVI and Land Surface Temperature (LST) were investigated. The NDVI profiles of different targets were analyzed to differentiate between rice and other crops, but the results failed to distinguish between rice and other crops in all stages after full vegetation cover. However, the analyzed LST profiles indicated the discrimination capability between rice and other crops in all vegetation development stages. The accuracy was high as 97% and 74% for LST and NDVI, respectively. The LST-based classification indicated that the distributed rice fields throughout the study area were 32.7% of the total cultivated area. The accuracy of LST results had an advantage over NDVI.