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ET · Ethiopia · –

Agalometi fire, 15 February 2026 Agalometi

Out · last detection 7 Mar 2026, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 15 February 2026 in Agalometi, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,195 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 47 in Ethiopia in 2026, of 205.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
4,195ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
15 Feb 2026 – 7 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Feb
2026
Heat detections
109
in a single hotspot: 404 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
104MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Feb7 Mar
7 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

15 Feb 2026 · 468 MW · 5 16 Feb 2026 · 3 MW · 1 17 Feb 2026 · 38 MW · 1 19 Feb 2026 · 5 MW · 1 21 Feb 2026 · 10 MW · 2 22 Feb 2026 · 78 MW · 17 23 Feb 2026 · 200 MW · 37 24 Feb 2026 · 603 MW · 23 26 Feb 2026 · 17 MW · 4 27 Feb 2026 · 42 MW · 2 28 Feb 2026 · 1 MW · 1 1 Mar 2026 · 14 MW · 2 2 Mar 2026 · 4 MW · 2 3 Mar 2026 · 159 MW · 6 5 Mar 2026 · 21 MW · 3 7 Mar 2026 · 7 MW · 2
15 Feb 21 Feb 24 Feb 2 Mar

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high
40km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 736 ha in 2016, 3,233 ha in 2017, 327 ha in 2018, 1,562 ha in 2019, 1,487 ha in 2020, 2,828 ha in 2021, 241 ha in 2022, 1,717 ha in 2023, 1,581 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,169 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (42 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Agalometi where it started
    4,220 ha reached on 15 Feb
    2.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area2.4 ha
Residents≈ 2,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 2,600 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Started with Very dry air: 26 % of the area in Ethiopia 60 days without rain: 37 % of the area in Ethiopia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
15 Feb 37.8 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Feb 35.6 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Feb 37.0 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Feb 39.1 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Feb 37.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Feb 36.1 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Feb 36.1 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Feb 37.1 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Feb 36.9 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Feb 34.3 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Feb 35.2 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Feb 34.5 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Feb 35.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Feb 35.3 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Mar 35.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Mar 34.9 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Mar 33.7 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Mar 35.5 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Mar 35.4 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Mar 35.1 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Mar 36.1 °C 9 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Mar after 36.9 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Mar after 37.1 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Mar after 36.8 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Mar after 37.0 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Mar after 37.3 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Mar after 38.8 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Mar after 39.1 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Mar after 37.6 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Mar after 39.0 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Mar after 37.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 8 Feb 2026
After · 14 Mar 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 21 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM1082 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
20 Feb23 Feb26 Feb1 Mar4 Mar
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 109Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ethiopia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Agalometi fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 February 2026 to 7 March 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 February 2026 to 1 March 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,195 hectares (42.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Agalometi (4,220 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ethiopia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 March 2026 → 7 March 2026.
  2. Start date: 22 February 2026 → 15 February 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 February 2026 to 1 March 2026. 109 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.