How long did the Central Gonja fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2026 and 12 January 2026: 9 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 9,558 hectares (95.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Gonja (9,592 ha, 1.3 %); Kintampo North (21 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 29 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 Ghana (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

GH · Ghana · 2026-01-04 → 2026-01-12

Central Gonja fire, 4 January 2026 Central Gonja, Kintampo North

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2026, 13:19 UTC

The fire started on 4 January 2026 in Central Gonja, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,558 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Savannah since 2016 (of 336 with a page). Number 16 in Ghana in 2026, of 179.

Burnt area: 9,558ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 4 Jan 2026 – 12 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 4 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 315; in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.4GW; sum of detected power

Play back 13 Jan 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jan12 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

5678910111213

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

29km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 991 ha in 2017, 1,160 ha in 2018, 1,157 ha in 2020, 155 ha in 2021, 23 ha in 2022, 1,060 ha in 2023, 828 ha in 2024, 617 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,713 ha that had burned before.

28 ha Central Gonja fire, December 2023 2,110 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Central Gonja where it started

9,592 ha reached on 28 Dec

1.3 %
Kintampo North

21 ha reached on 28 Dec

0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
4 Jan	36.3 °C	38 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Jan	37.2 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Jan	38.0 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Jan	37.4 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Jan	35.3 °C	24 %	25 km/h	0.7 mm	High 31
9 Jan	37.5 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Jan	37.3 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Jan	36.5 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Jan	35.5 °C	19 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Jan after	37.0 °C	21 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Jan after	36.4 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
15 Jan after	36.8 °C	30 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Jan after	36.8 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Jan after	36.4 °C	20 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Jan after	37.3 °C	20 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
19 Jan after	37.4 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Jan after	36.7 °C	20 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Jan after	34.4 °C	22 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Jan after	35.2 °C	17 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Dec 2025

After · 19 Jan 2026

Before After

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 13 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 112 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 98: 6.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak112 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM10269 µg/m³

Optical depth1.29

WHO 15

23456789101112131415

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 · 315Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Central Gonja fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2026 and 12 January 2026: 9 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 9,558 hectares (95.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Gonja (9,592 ha, 1.3 %); Kintampo North (21 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 29 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 Ghana (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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned