Antsohihy fire, December 2024 Antsohihy, Befandriana Nord
The fire started on 6 December 2024 in Antsohihy, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,932 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Sofia since 2016 (of 170 with a page). Number 2 in Madagascar in 2024, of 54.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 14,932ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 6 Dec 2024 – 19 Dec 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 6 Dec
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 664
- in a single hotspot: 106 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 513MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 20 Dec.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,809 ha in 2016, 7,839 ha in 2017, 9,104 ha in 2020, 5,692 ha in 2021, 5,212 ha in 2022, 4,992 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,657 ha that had burned before.
- 5,609 ha Antsohihy fire, December 2021 9,454 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,435 ha Antsohihy fire, November 2020 14,518 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,078 ha Antsohihy fire, November 2020 4,022 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,476 ha Antsohihy fire, December 2022 3,217 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,955 ha Antsohihy fire, November 2017 2,367 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,872 ha Antsohihy fire, November 2017 4,261 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,872 ha Antsohihy fire, December 2023 2,523 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,843 ha Antsohihy fire, December 2022 2,147 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Antsohihy where it started14,336 ha reached on 6 Dec3.0 %
-
686 ha reached on 6 Dec0.1 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 650 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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Dec | 32.5 °C | 47 % | 22 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very low 2 |
| 7 Dec | 33.8 °C | 39 % | 22 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 6 |
| 8 Dec | 32.5 °C | 46 % | 23 km/h | 0.8 mm | Low 6 |
| 9 Dec | 35.4 °C | 36 % | 23 km/h | 1.2 mm | Low 6 |
| 10 Dec | 34.3 °C | 39 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 11 Dec | 34.4 °C | 37 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 12 Dec | 34.0 °C | 40 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 13 Dec | 33.9 °C | 44 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 14 Dec | 34.4 °C | 46 % | 34 km/h | 3.2 mm | Very low 5 |
| 15 Dec | 35.0 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 16 Dec | 35.7 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 17 Dec | 37.0 °C | 28 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 18 Dec | 35.1 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 19 Dec | 35.3 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 20 Dec after | 35.2 °C | 35 % | 39 km/h | 1.4 mm | Moderate 16 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 8 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 45 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 664Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 9,454 haAntsohihyDecember 2021 · 18 days · 8 km away
- 4,261 haAntsohihy22 November 2017 · 7 days · 9 km away
- 14,518 haAntsohihy14 November 2020 · 25 days · 15 km away
- 5,296 haBefandriana Nord19 November 2022 · 17 days · 21 km away
- 4,814 haBefandriana Nord24 November 2022 · 13 days · 32 km away
- 7,375 haAntsohihy8 September 2026 · 16 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Antsohihy fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 December 2024 to 19 December 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 December 2024 to 12 December 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,932 hectares (149.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Antsohihy (14,336 ha, 3.0 %); Befandriana Nord (686 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Madagascar (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 12 December 2024 → 19 December 2024.
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 December 2024 to 12 December 2024. 664 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.
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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.