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NG · Nigeria · –

Bama fire, 31 October 2025 Bama, Kala Balge

Out · last detection 6 Nov 2025, 00:05 UTC

The fire started on 31 October 2025 in Bama, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,716 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 136 in Nigeria in 2025, of 227.

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.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,716ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
31 Oct 2025 – 6 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
31 Oct
2025
Heat detections
33
in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
36MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Oct6 Nov
6 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

1 Nov 2025 · 6 MW · 1 2 Nov 2025 · 21 MW · 3 3 Nov 2025 · 27 MW · 7 4 Nov 2025 · 9 MW · 5 5 Nov 2025 · 148 MW · 15 6 Nov 2025 · 1 MW · 2
1 Nov 3 Nov 5 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

39°high
30km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. Bama where it started
    2,122 ha reached on 1 Nov
    0.5 %
  2. 611 ha reached on 5 Nov
    0.2 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
31 Oct 37.5 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Nov 37.5 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Nov 37.4 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Nov 37.5 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Nov 38.5 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Nov 38.7 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Nov 37.7 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Nov after 37.6 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
8 Nov after 37.8 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Nov after 37.8 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Nov after 37.8 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
11 Nov after 37.0 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
12 Nov after 37.5 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Nov after 37.7 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Nov after 37.4 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Nov after 34.9 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Nov after 34.2 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Oct 2025
After · 13 Nov 2025

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 1 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak108 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10137 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
30 Oct2 Nov5 Nov8 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 · 33Every 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 Nigeria

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bama fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 October 2025 to 6 November 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2025 to 6 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,716 hectares (27.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bama (2,122 ha, 0.5 %); Kala Balge (611 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (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 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 1 November 2025 → 31 October 2025.

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 1 November 2025 to 6 November 2025. 33 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.

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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.