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BF · Burkina Faso · –

Boala fire, October 2026 Boala, Pissila, Pibaoré

Burning · last detection 15 Nov 2026, 01:04 UTC

The fire started on 27 October 2026 in Boala, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,961 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

Number 7 in Burkina Faso in 2026, of 448.

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…

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 15 Nov 2026, 01:04 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. 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
15,961ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
27 Oct 2026 – 15 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
4
communes
Started on
27 Oct
2026
Heat detections
311
in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
210MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Oct15 Nov
15 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Oct 2026 · 76 MW · 14 30 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 31 Oct 2026 · 6 MW · 3 2 Nov 2026 · 107 MW · 17 3 Nov 2026 · 708 MW · 52 4 Nov 2026 · 854 MW · 62 5 Nov 2026 · 31 MW · 6 6 Nov 2026 · 408 MW · 41 7 Nov 2026 · 349 MW · 54 8 Nov 2026 · 250 MW · 38 9 Nov 2026 · 42 MW · 12 10 Nov 2026 · 13 MW · 3 12 Nov 2026 · 8 MW · 2 13 Nov 2026 · 22 MW · 3 14 Nov 2026 · 72 MW · 4 15 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0
27 Oct 4 Nov 7 Nov 12 Nov

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

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (41 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

40°high
42km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 997 ha in 2024, 1,454 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,460 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (160 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. Boala where it started
    10,826 ha reached on 27 Oct
    23 %
  2. 4,177 ha reached on 27 Oct
    2.6 %
  3. 942 ha reached on 27 Oct
    2.1 %
  4. 133 ha reached on 9 Nov
    0.1 %

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.

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)
27 Oct 35.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Oct 35.6 °C 33 % 22 km/h 1.0 mm High 31
29 Oct 35.5 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
30 Oct 37.5 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Oct 36.7 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Nov 37.5 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Nov 38.6 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Nov 38.6 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Nov 38.7 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Nov 39.4 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Nov 40.2 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
7 Nov 39.2 °C 12 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Nov 38.3 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
9 Nov 38.1 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Nov 39.4 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Nov 36.9 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Nov 37.8 °C 18 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Nov 37.7 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Nov 37.5 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 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 1 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1053 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
31123
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 · 311Every 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 Burkina Faso

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Boala fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 October 2026 to 15 November 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 November 2026 to 9 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,961 hectares (159.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Boala (10,826 ha, 23 %); Pissila (4,177 ha, 2.6 %); Pibaoré (942 ha, 2.1 %); Tougouri (133 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Boala fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 15 Nov 2026, 01:04 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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 · 11 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 4 November 2026.
  1. Area: 14,986 → 15,961 ha.
  2. Area: 12,768 → 14,986 ha.
  3. Area: 4,775 → 12,768 ha.
  4. Start date: 31 October 2026 → 27 October 2026.
  5. The page “Boala, 4 November 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
  6. The page “Boala, 3 November 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
  7. Page published (1,480 ha).
  8. Area: 1,551 → 4,775 ha.
  9. Start date: 2 November 2026 → 31 October 2026.
  10. Name: Pibaoré → Boala.
  11. Page published (1,551 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.

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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 2 November 2026 to 9 November 2026. 311 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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.