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Guba fire, 30 November 2023 Guba

Out · last detection 8 Dec 2023, 11:13 UTC

The fire started on 30 November 2023 in Guba, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,213 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 287th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 39 in Ethiopia in 2023, of 101.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guba · 2020Guba · 2021Guba · 2017Quara · 2016

Burnt area
3,213ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
30 Nov 2023 – 8 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
30 Nov
2023
Heat detections
99
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
152MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Nov8 Dec
8 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

30 Nov 2023 · 9 MW · 3 3 Dec 2023 · 12 MW · 8 4 Dec 2023 · 19 MW · 3 6 Dec 2023 · 487 MW · 38 7 Dec 2023 · 367 MW · 42 8 Dec 2023 · 18 MW · 5
30 Nov 3 Dec 4 Dec 6 Dec 7 Dec 8 Dec

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
34km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 102 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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. Guba where it started
    3,234 ha reached on 30 Nov
    0.5 %

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.

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 39.0 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Dec 39.3 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Dec 38.7 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Dec 37.5 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Dec 37.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Dec 36.5 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Dec after 36.4 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Dec after 38.1 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Dec after 37.1 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Dec after 36.9 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Dec after 34.7 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Dec after 35.0 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Dec after 36.7 °C 16 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Dec after 36.9 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Dec after 38.1 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Dec after 37.3 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Nov 2023
After · 15 Dec 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 7 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.47
1234567891011
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 · 99Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 November 2023 to 8 December 2023 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 December 2023 to 8 December 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,213 hectares (32.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guba (3,234 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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.

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.

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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 3 December 2023 to 8 December 2023. 99 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 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.