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IN · India · –

Babai fire, November 2026 Babai, Budni

Dying down · last detection 14 Nov 2026, 08:26 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2026 in Babai, India, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,090 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 62 in India in 2026, of 63.

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

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Is it still active?

No detections since 14 Nov 2026, 08:26 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
5,090ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
4 Nov 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
4 Nov
2026
Heat detections
129
in a single hotspot: 15 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
70MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov14 Nov
14 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

4 Nov 2026 · 2 MW · 1 6 Nov 2026 · 10 MW · 3 7 Nov 2026 · 36 MW · 4 8 Nov 2026 · 44 MW · 5 9 Nov 2026 · 175 MW · 29 10 Nov 2026 · 194 MW · 32 11 Nov 2026 · 30 MW · 8 12 Nov 2026 · 64 MW · 13 13 Nov 2026 · 57 MW · 16 14 Nov 2026 · 95 MW · 18
4 Nov 7 Nov 10 Nov 13 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
24km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,911 ha in 2016, 2,057 ha in 2017, 1,975 ha in 2018, 3,812 ha in 2019, 4,435 ha in 2020, 5,001 ha in 2021, 2,623 ha in 2022, 4,482 ha in 2023, 3,532 ha in 2024, 4,638 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,093 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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. Babai where it started
    5,113 ha reached on 4 Nov
    8.2 %
  2. 3 ha
    0.0 %

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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
4 Nov 30.4 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Nov 30.5 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Nov 31.0 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Nov 31.5 °C 30 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Nov 31.7 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Nov 31.3 °C 30 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Nov 30.8 °C 32 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Nov 30.3 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Nov 29.4 °C 32 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Nov 30.0 °C 35 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Nov 30.6 °C 30 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2026
After · 14 Nov 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 8 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 56: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak98 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10112 µg/m³
Optical depth0.75
2 Nov5 Nov8 Nov11 Nov
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 · 129Every 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 India

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Babai fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 November 2026 to 14 November 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 November 2026 to 13 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,090 hectares (50.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Babai (5,113 ha, 8.2 %); Budni (3 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Babai fire still active?
No fire detections since 14 Nov 2026, 08:26 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of India (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 14 November 2026.
  1. Page published (5,090 ha).

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 7 November 2026 to 13 November 2026. 129 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.