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ET · Ethiopia · →

Guba fire, March 2022 Guba

Out · last detection 8 Mar 2022, 23:48 UTC

The fire started on 6 March 2022 in Guba, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,530 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 235th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 38 in Ethiopia in 2022, of 135.

Burnt area
3,530ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
6 Mar 2022 – 8 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Mar
2022
Heat detections
113
in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
2.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Mar 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Mar8 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

678

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
27km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 345 ha in 2016, 6 ha in 2017, 2,069 ha in 2020, 195 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,804 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Guba where it started
    3,546 ha reached on 6 Mar
    0.5 %

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)
6 Mar 41.5 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Mar 43.1 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Mar 43.3 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Mar after 43.5 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Mar after 43.3 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
11 Mar after 43.0 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
12 Mar after 39.2 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Mar after 40.2 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Mar after 40.7 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Mar after 40.1 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
16 Mar after 38.2 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 Mar after 37.5 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Mar after 38.1 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Feb 2022
After · 15 Mar 2022

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 · 113Every 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 Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guba fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 March 2022 and 8 March 2022: 3 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 3,530 hectares (35.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guba (3,546 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 43.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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

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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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.