Guba fire, 3 December 2019 Guba
The fire started on 3 December 2019 in Guba, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,514 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 78th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 30 in Ethiopia in 2019, of 220.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Guba · 2017Guba · 2016Guba · 2016Guba · 2020
- Burnt area
- 6,514ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 3 Dec 2019 – 10 Dec 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 3 Dec
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 157
- in a single hotspot: 61 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 119MW
- 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 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,012 ha in 2016, 3,100 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,881 ha that had burned before.
- 3,100 ha Guba fire, November 2017 9,347 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,729 ha Guba fire, November 2016 7,224 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Guba fire, November 2016 2,072 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
-
Guba where it started6,557 ha reached on 3 Dec0.9 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Dec | 35.5 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 4 Dec | 35.2 °C | 17 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Dec | 35.5 °C | 20 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 6 Dec | 36.3 °C | 22 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Dec | 34.9 °C | 23 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 8 Dec | 35.4 °C | 25 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 9 Dec | 35.8 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Dec | 36.2 °C | 22 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 11 Dec after | 36.7 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Dec after | 34.1 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Dec after | 35.1 °C | 31 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 14 Dec after | 35.7 °C | 22 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Dec after | 36.0 °C | 27 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Dec after | 34.2 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Dec after | 34.3 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 18 Dec after | 34.8 °C | 31 % | 25 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Dec after | 35.4 °C | 26 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Dec after | 35.1 °C | 28 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
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.
Detections table · 157Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 9,347 haGuba19 November 2017 · 12 days · 2 km away
- 10,361 haGuba27 November 2020 · 7 days · 11 km away
- 11,110 haGuba10 December 2019 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 28,159 haQuara22 November 2016 · 15 days · 20 km away
- 10,633 haGuba5 December 2017 · 9 days · 21 km away
- 12,439 haGuba29 December 2025 · 15 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Guba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 December 2019 and 10 December 2019: 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 6,514 hectares (65.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Guba (6,557 ha, 0.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 31 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 Ethiopia (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
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.
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. 157 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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.