Burned area
satellite only1,781ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 16 Mar 2026 – 17 Mar 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BF · Burkina Faso · –
Fada-Ngourma fire, March 2026 Fada-Ngourma
Out · last detection 17 Mar 2026, 00:52 UTC
The fire started on 16 March 2026 in Fada-Ngourma, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,781 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 133 in Burkina Faso in 2026, of 322.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
The power measured by the satellite is low (24.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only2days
16 Mar 2026 to 17 Mar 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 17 Mar 2026, 00:52 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only16 Mar 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 16 Mar 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only48
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 25 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 16 Mar 2026 – 17 Mar 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only370MW
Total radiative power on 16 March 2026; hotspots that day: 47.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 16 Mar 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model69.5FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 16 Mar 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.7°C · 8% RH
High of 38.7 °C and minimum humidity of 8% on 16 March 2026; gusts of 44 km/h on 16 March 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 16 Mar 2026 – 17 Mar 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 40people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 0.44 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 1,781 ha
- Dates
- 16 Mar 2026 – 17 Mar 2026
- Name
- Fada-Ngourma
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/fada-ngourma-2026-03?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire fada-ngourma-2026-03.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-03-16 | 47 | 370 | 38.7 | 26.4 | 8 | 22.2 | 43.9 | 0 | 69.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-03-17 | 1 | 1 | 38.3 | 23.5 | 5 | 12 | 29.2 | 0 | 57 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-03-18 | 0 | 0 | 39.8 | 22.5 | 7 | 12.4 | 26.6 | 0 | 57.8 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-19 | 0 | 0 | 41.3 | 24.4 | 8 | 17.2 | 31.7 | 0 | 64.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-20 | 0 | 0 | 41.9 | 28.4 | 8 | 19.8 | 40.7 | 0 | 68.8 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-21 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 26.9 | 6 | 16.9 | 38.2 | 0 | 65.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-22 | 0 | 0 | 40.9 | 26.7 | 18 | 14.1 | 33.5 | 0 | 56.4 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-23 | 0 | 0 | 37.7 | 28.8 | 28 | 18.3 | 37.8 | 0 | 50.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-24 | 0 | 0 | 40.4 | 27.1 | 20 | 12.4 | 30.2 | 0 | 45.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-03-25 | 0 | 0 | 40.9 | 27.9 | 19 | 18.6 | 39.2 | 0 | 53.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-26 | 0 | 0 | 40.2 | 29.1 | 28 | 22.7 | 45 | 0 | 57.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-03-27 | 0 | 0 | 35.4 | 26.8 | 41 | 22.4 | 47.5 | 2.5 | 24.2 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,781ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 16 Mar 2026 – 17 Mar 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 16 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 48
- in a single hotspot: 25 MW
- Danger at start
- 70
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 186MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
16 Mar17 Mar
17 Mar 2026
How it evolved, day by day
16 Mar
17 Mar
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
39°high
44km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 27 Mar.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2020.
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
-
Fada-Ngourma where it started1,793 ha reached on 16 Mar0.5 %
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 2025Built-up area0.44 ha
Residents≈ 40
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.44 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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)
Started with Very dry air: 56 % of the area in Burkina Faso 60 days without rain: 26 % of the area in Burkina Faso
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Mar | 38.7 °C | 8 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 17 Mar | 38.3 °C | 5 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 18 Mar after | 39.8 °C | 7 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 19 Mar after | 41.3 °C | 8 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 20 Mar after | 41.9 °C | 8 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 21 Mar after | 42.0 °C | 6 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 22 Mar after | 40.9 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 23 Mar after | 37.7 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Mar after | 40.4 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 25 Mar after | 40.9 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 26 Mar after | 40.2 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 27 Mar after | 35.4 °C | 41 % | 48 km/h | 2.5 mm | High 24 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 9 Mar 2026
After · 24 Mar 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 70 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak70 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10405 µg/m³
Optical depth0.56
WHO 15
14 Mar16 Mar18 Mar20 Mar
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 · 48Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Fada-Ngourma fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 March 2026 and 17 March 2026: 2 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 1,781 hectares (17.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Fada-Ngourma (1,793 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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. 48 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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO)). 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.