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SN · Senegal · –

Bala fire, 4 November 2026 Missira, Bala, Koussanar

Dying down · last detection 8 Nov 2026, 14:26 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 4 November 2026 in Bala, Senegal. It has been active for 5 days, with 242 heat detections and an area with fire of about 3,010 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.

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.

Compare with…

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

No detections since 8 Nov 2026, 14:26 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.

Area with fire
≈ 3,010ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
5days
4 Nov 2026 – 8 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
4 Nov
2026
Heat detections
242
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
512MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov8 Nov
8 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

4 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 5 Nov 2026 · 654 MW · 103 6 Nov 2026 · 552 MW · 74 7 Nov 2026 · 189 MW · 12 8 Nov 2026 · 653 MW · 90
4 Nov 5 Nov 6 Nov 7 Nov 8 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

36°high
38km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. 1,876 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.2 %
  2. Bala where it started
    1,120 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.4 %
  3. 14 ha reached on 5 Nov
    0.0 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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 32.5 °C 45 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
5 Nov 35.2 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Nov 36.2 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Nov 35.7 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Nov 34.4 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2026
After · 8 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.

Detections table · 242Every 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 Senegal

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bala fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 4 November 2026 to 8 November 2026 (5 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 3,010 hectares with fire (30.1 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Missira (1,876 ha, 0.2 %); Bala (1,120 ha, 0.4 %); Koussanar (14 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Bala fire still active?
No fire detections since 8 Nov 2026, 14:26 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (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: 18 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

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 18.

How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 3,010 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 242 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • 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 (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.