Buliisa fire, 3 January 2026 Buliisa
The fire started on 3 January 2026 in Buliisa, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,718 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 4th largest in Western Region since 2016 (of 255 with a page). Number 2 in Uganda in 2026, of 270.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 9,718ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 3 Jan 2026 – 19 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 3 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 200
- in a single hotspot: 78 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 130MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,028 ha in 2016, 5,825 ha in 2017, 2,197 ha in 2018, 5,506 ha in 2019, 3,320 ha in 2020, 3,011 ha in 2021, 1,988 ha in 2022, 3,193 ha in 2023, 176 ha in 2024, 2,457 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,601 ha that had burned before.
- 5,223 ha Buliisa fire, January 2019 10,795 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,698 ha Buliisa fire, December 2017 2,769 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,226 ha Buliisa fire, December 2016 9,055 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,781 ha Buliisa fire, January 2023 1,963 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,708 ha Buliisa fire, January 2020 4,167 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,523 ha Buliisa fire, January 2021 3,494 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,487 ha Buliisa fire, January 2021 1,744 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,293 ha Buliisa fire, December 2018 1,698 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Buliisa where it started9,785 ha reached on 3 Jan4.3 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 3.8 hectares of built-up land and about 550 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jan | 35.5 °C | 24 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 4 Jan | 35.0 °C | 28 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 5 Jan | 34.3 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 6 Jan | 34.4 °C | 27 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Jan | 36.1 °C | 20 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 8 Jan | 36.2 °C | 20 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Jan | 35.7 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 10 Jan | 33.1 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Jan | 32.4 °C | 38 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 12 Jan | 33.9 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 13 Jan | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Jan | 36.1 °C | 22 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Jan | 37.5 °C | 13 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Jan | 36.3 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Jan | 35.8 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 18 Jan | 36.3 °C | 23 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 19 Jan | 34.9 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Jan after | 36.4 °C | 25 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 21 Jan after | 37.8 °C | 20 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Jan after | 38.1 °C | 14 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Jan after | 36.3 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 24 Jan after | 35.7 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Jan after | 37.3 °C | 20 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Jan after | 35.2 °C | 28 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Jan after | 34.4 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 36 |
| 28 Jan after | 31.7 °C | 42 % | 26 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Jan after | 33.6 °C | 39 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 15 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 66 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 200Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 9,055 haBuliisa15 December 2016 · 16 days · 4 km away
- 10,795 haBuliisa6 January 2019 · 9 days · 8 km away
- 7,394 haBuliisa4 January 2018 · 3 days · 12 km away
- 6,881 haNwoya4 February 2021 · 7 days · 16 km away
- 13,858 haKibanda9 February 2016 · 7 days · 22 km away
- 41,220 haKibanda2 January 2017 · 15 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Buliisa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2026 and 19 January 2026: 17 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 9,718 hectares (97.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Buliisa (9,785 ha, 4.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (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: 999 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 200 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 (Public Domain). 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.