Skip to content
worldfires
en
NG · Nigeria · →

Donga fire, December 2022 Donga

Out · last detection 12 Jan 2023, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 30 December 2022 in Donga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,534 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 92th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 74 in Nigeria in 2022, of 125.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Donga · 2019Donga · 2025Donga · 2026Kurmi · 2026

Burnt area
2,534ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
30 Dec 2022 – 12 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
30 Dec
2022
Heat detections
75
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
44MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Dec12 Jan
12 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 2023 · 199 MW · 31 3 Jan 2023 · 26 MW · 6 4 Jan 2023 · 70 MW · 15 5 Jan 2023 · 15 MW · 5 6 Jan 2023 · 15 MW · 3 7 Jan 2023 · 35 MW · 5 9 Jan 2023 · 14 MW · 3 11 Jan 2023 · 14 MW · 5 12 Jan 2023 · 9 MW · 2
2 Jan 4 Jan 6 Jan 9 Jan 12 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
34km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 281 ha in 2019, 154 ha in 2020, 298 ha in 2021, 17 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 591 ha that had burned before.

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. Donga where it started
    2,549 ha reached on 2 Jan
    0.8 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
2 Jan 33.4 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Jan 34.3 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Jan 35.8 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Jan 35.8 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jan 34.1 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jan 36.2 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jan 35.6 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Jan 36.5 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Jan 34.4 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Jan 34.3 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Jan 34.5 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Jan after 35.2 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jan after 34.4 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Jan after 34.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Dec 2022
After · 19 Jan 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 6 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM1095 µg/m³
Optical depth0.61
3112345678
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 · 75Every 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 Donga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 December 2022 to 12 January 2023 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 January 2023 to 5 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,534 hectares (25.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Donga (2,549 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % 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 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 January 2023 to 5 January 2023. 75 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 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.