Jore fire, February 2018 Jore, Jikawo
The fire started on 28 February 2018 in Jore, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 33,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 9th largest in Gambela since 2016 (of 611 with a page). Number 2 in Ethiopia in 2018, of 102.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Jore · 2016Jore · 2016Jore · 2016Jore · 2017
- Burnt area
- 33,633ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 28days
- 28 Feb 2018 – 27 Mar 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 28 Feb
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 1,454
- in a single hotspot: 485 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 956MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 28 Mar.
This area had burned before
56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,397 ha in 2016, 15,035 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 18,889 ha that had burned before.
- 5,596 ha Jore fire, December 2016 64,789 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,287 ha Jore fire, March 2016 5,701 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,278 ha Jore fire, March 2016 4,278 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,716 ha Jore fire, January 2017 6,445 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,668 ha Jore fire, January 2017 2,774 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,181 ha Jore fire, February 2017 3,416 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 903 ha Jikawo fire, January 2017 3,735 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 489 ha Jore fire, February 2017 3,310 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
-
Jore where it started33,341 ha reached on 28 Feb9.8 %
-
515 ha reached on 28 Feb0.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Feb | 36.8 °C | 30 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Mar | 36.4 °C | 29 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 2 Mar | 39.2 °C | 11 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 3 Mar | 37.5 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 4 Mar | 39.1 °C | 8 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Mar | 38.9 °C | 15 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 6 Mar | 39.2 °C | 14 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 7 Mar | 39.0 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 8 Mar | 39.4 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 9 Mar | 40.9 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 10 Mar | 40.2 °C | 22 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 11 Mar | 38.8 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 12 Mar | 37.1 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 13 Mar | 37.8 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 2.8 mm | High 25 |
| 14 Mar | 36.7 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Mar | 39.5 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 16 Mar | 38.1 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Mar | 38.7 °C | 23 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 18 Mar | 38.9 °C | 20 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 19 Mar | 37.2 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Mar | 38.4 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Mar | 38.1 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 1.8 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Mar | 38.5 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 4.2 mm | High 21 |
| 23 Mar | 38.2 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 24 Mar | 38.5 °C | 29 % | 45 km/h | 1.9 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Mar | 37.9 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Mar | 38.0 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Mar | 39.2 °C | 30 % | 46 km/h | 0.9 mm | Very high 38 |
| 28 Mar after | 39.1 °C | 28 % | 40 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 36 |
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 · 1,454Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Jore fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2018 to 27 March 2018 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 March 2018 to 23 March 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 33,633 hectares (336.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Jore (33,341 ha, 9.8 %); Jikawo (515 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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
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; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 March 2018 to 23 March 2018. 1,454 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.