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NG · Nigeria · –

Bukkuyum fire, 2 November 2026 Gummi, Bukkuyum

Dying down · last detection 6 Nov 2026, 13:22 UTC

The fire started on 2 November 2026 in Bukkuyum, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,462 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 228 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, 13:22 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
2,462ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
2 Nov 2026 – 6 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
2 Nov
2026
Heat detections
40
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
277MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Nov6 Nov
6 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

2 Nov 2026 · 15 MW · 4 5 Nov 2026 · 807 MW · 34 6 Nov 2026 · 11 MW · 2
2 Nov 5 Nov 6 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
32km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 381 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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. 1,657 ha reached on 5 Nov
    0.6 %
  2. Bukkuyum where it started
    821 ha reached on 2 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
2 Nov 35.9 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Nov 37.4 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Nov 35.7 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Nov 36.9 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Nov 36.7 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Nov after 36.3 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Oct 2026
After · 7 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 168 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 103: 6.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak168 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10334 µg/m³
Optical depth0.58
31 Oct2 Nov4 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 · 40Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 November 2026 and 6 November 2026: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,462 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gummi (1,657 ha, 0.6 %); Bukkuyum (821 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Bukkuyum fire still active?
No fire detections since 6 Nov 2026, 13:22 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 6 November 2026.
  1. Area: 2,247 → 2,462 ha.
  2. Page published (2,247 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 40 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.