Jore fire, 23 February 2024 Jore
The fire started on 23 February 2024 in Jore, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,062 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 60th largest in Gambela since 2016 (of 611 with a page). Number 5 in Ethiopia in 2024, of 87.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Jore · 2016Jore · 2021Jore · 2019Jore · 2022
- Burnt area
- 9,062ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 23 Feb 2024 – 4 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 23 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 320
- in a single hotspot: 179 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 585MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,886 ha in 2016, 5,355 ha in 2017, 1,479 ha in 2018, 6,570 ha in 2019, 5,069 ha in 2020, 7,157 ha in 2021, 6,256 ha in 2022, 5,584 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,041 ha that had burned before.
- 7,298 ha Jore fire, December 2016 64,789 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,882 ha Jore fire, February 2021 47,727 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,570 ha Jore fire, January 2019 23,559 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,224 ha Jore fire, January 2022 201,499 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,528 ha Jore fire, January 2023 16,039 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,887 ha Jore fire, March 2020 17,815 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,360 ha Jore fire, March 2018 2,719 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 451 ha Jore fire, January 2016 2,248 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 started9,117 ha reached on 20 Feb2.7 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Feb | 40.9 °C | 11 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 21 Feb | 40.4 °C | 23 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 Feb | 39.8 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Feb | 40.0 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 24 Feb | 39.8 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 25 Feb | 41.6 °C | 15 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 26 Feb | 39.6 °C | 16 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 27 Feb | 40.8 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 28 Feb | 40.3 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 29 Feb | 41.0 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 1 Mar | 41.0 °C | 11 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 2 Mar | 39.7 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 3 Mar | 42.0 °C | 11 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 4 Mar | 42.4 °C | 7 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Mar after | 41.1 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 6 Mar after | 38.6 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 7 Mar after | 38.4 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 36 |
| 8 Mar after | 40.7 °C | 13 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 9 Mar after | 41.7 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 10 Mar after | 40.3 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 11 Mar after | 41.2 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 12 Mar after | 41.8 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 13 Mar after | 42.5 °C | 17 % | 49 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 14 Mar after | 42.7 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 60 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 5 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 320Every 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?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 February 2024 and 4 March 2024: 11 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 9,062 hectares (90.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Jore (9,117 ha, 2.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 42.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.
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. 320 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.