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Dilly fire, 4 November 2023 Dilly

Out · last detection 11 Nov 2023, 13:03 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2023 in Dilly, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,166 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 36th largest in Koulikouro since 2016 (of 120 with a page). Number 15 in Mali in 2023, of 56.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dilly · 2016Dilly · 2025Dilly · 2025Dilly · 2024

Burnt area
3,166ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
4 Nov 2023 – 11 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
4 Nov
2023
Heat detections
85
in a single hotspot: 192 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
131MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov11 Nov
11 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Nov 2023 · 8 MW · 1 5 Nov 2023 · 139 MW · 17 6 Nov 2023 · 122 MW · 16 7 Nov 2023 · 501 MW · 15 8 Nov 2023 · 43 MW · 6 9 Nov 2023 · 61 MW · 13 11 Nov 2023 · 41 MW · 7
4 Nov 5 Nov 6 Nov 7 Nov 8 Nov 9 Nov 11 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

40°high
31km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 92 ha in 2016, 68 ha in 2019, 73 ha in 2020, 1 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 190 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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. Dilly where it started
    3,181 ha reached on 1 Nov
    0.6 %

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 Nov 39.6 °C 11 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Nov 39.2 °C 18 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Nov 38.8 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Nov 38.9 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Nov 36.3 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Nov 36.2 °C 15 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Nov 36.4 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Nov 36.9 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Nov after 39.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Nov after 38.8 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 Nov after 38.4 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Nov after 37.4 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
16 Nov after 37.7 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 Nov after 38.7 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Nov after 38.7 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
19 Nov after 38.5 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Nov after 37.7 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Nov after 35.7 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2023
After · 18 Nov 2023

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 9 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10116 µg/m³
Optical depth0.41
234567891011121314
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 · 85Every 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 Mali ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dilly fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 November 2023 and 11 November 2023: 8 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 3,166 hectares (31.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dilly (3,181 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mali (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.

Satellite cross-check

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 85 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.

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 ADM3 (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.