Dodoth fire, 4 January 2026 Dodoth
The fire started on 4 January 2026 in Dodoth, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,530 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 47th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 11 in Uganda in 2026, of 270.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Dodoth · 2016Dodoth · 2022Dodoth · 2020Dodoth · 2021
- Burnt area
- 4,530ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 4 Jan 2026 – 10 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 4 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 103
- in a single hotspot: 135 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 142MW
- 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 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,279 ha in 2016, 384 ha in 2018, 1,133 ha in 2020, 587 ha in 2021, 1,185 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,917 ha that had burned before.
- 1,269 ha Dodoth fire, February 2016 1,641 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,184 ha Dodoth fire, January 2022 3,823 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 720 ha Dodoth fire, December 2020 1,707 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 530 ha Dodoth fire, March 2021 5,317 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 413 ha Dodoth fire, January 2020 1,460 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 384 ha Dodoth fire, October 2018 1,093 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 57 ha Dodoth fire, January 2021 6,500 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10 ha Dodoth fire, February 2016 1,439 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
-
Dodoth where it started4,561 ha reached on 4 Jan0.6 %
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 Jan | 28.9 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Jan | 31.0 °C | 21 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 6 Jan | 30.9 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Jan | 31.2 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Jan | 30.6 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Jan | 31.0 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Jan | 30.4 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Jan after | 30.5 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 12 Jan after | 30.1 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 13 Jan after | 30.5 °C | 25 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 14 Jan after | 30.4 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 15 Jan after | 30.4 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 16 Jan after | 31.4 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Jan after | 31.0 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 18 Jan after | 29.6 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 19 Jan after | 29.7 °C | 33 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 20 Jan after | 31.2 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
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 10 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 103Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Dodoth fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2026 and 10 January 2026: 7 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 4,530 hectares (45.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Dodoth (4,561 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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
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.
Report an error
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. 103 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.
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.