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NG · Nigeria · –

Bukkuyum fire, 17 October 2026 Bukkuyum

Dying down · last detection 6 Nov 2026, 13:20 UTC

The fire started on 17 October 2026 in Bukkuyum, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,519 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 31 in Nigeria in 2026, of 328.

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.

Is it still active?

No detections since 6 Nov 2026, 13:20 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
8,519ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
17 Oct 2026 – 6 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
17 Oct
2026
Heat detections
163
in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
84MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Oct6 Nov
6 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

17 Oct 2026 · 9 MW · 2 18 Oct 2026 · 14 MW · 2 19 Oct 2026 · 83 MW · 5 20 Oct 2026 · 56 MW · 5 21 Oct 2026 · 116 MW · 9 22 Oct 2026 · 27 MW · 2 23 Oct 2026 · 165 MW · 12 24 Oct 2026 · 50 MW · 10 25 Oct 2026 · 199 MW · 16 26 Oct 2026 · 204 MW · 19 27 Oct 2026 · 14 MW · 2 28 Oct 2026 · 4 MW · 1 29 Oct 2026 · 150 MW · 15 30 Oct 2026 · 70 MW · 9 31 Oct 2026 · 35 MW · 7 1 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 2 Nov 2026 · 22 MW · 2 3 Nov 2026 · 273 MW · 20 4 Nov 2026 · 28 MW · 4 5 Nov 2026 · 92 MW · 10 6 Nov 2026 · 61 MW · 11
17 Oct 22 Oct 27 Oct 3 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

37°high
34km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 663 ha in 2022, 416 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 826 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.4% of the area of London (85 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. Bukkuyum where it started
    8,741 ha reached on 17 Oct
    2.3 %

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)
17 Oct 34.3 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Oct 34.0 °C 37 % 21 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 17
19 Oct 34.7 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Oct 34.7 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Oct 33.8 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Oct 33.5 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Oct 33.9 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Oct 34.0 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Oct 33.9 °C 22 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Oct 34.8 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Oct 34.7 °C 29 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 Oct 35.1 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Oct 35.0 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Oct 35.8 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Oct 34.5 °C 30 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Nov 35.7 °C 24 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Nov 35.6 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
3 Nov 36.9 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Nov 35.5 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Nov 36.4 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Nov 35.2 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Oct 2026
After · 6 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 22 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 100 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 85: 5.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak100 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10414 µg/m³
Optical depth0.66
15 Oct17 Oct19 Oct21 Oct23 Oct
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 · 163Every 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 Bukkuyum fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 October 2026 to 6 November 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 October 2026 to 6 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,519 hectares (85.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bukkuyum (8,741 ha, 2.3 %).
Is the Bukkuyum fire still active?
No fire detections since 6 Nov 2026, 13:20 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
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 · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 25 October 2026.
  1. Area: 3,215 → 8,476 ha.
  2. The page “Bukkuyum, 17 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
  3. Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 1 November 2026.
  4. Area: 3,128 → 3,215 ha.
  5. Area: 2,733 → 3,128 ha.
  6. Page published (2,733 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 October 2026 to 6 November 2026. 163 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 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.