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BF · Burkina Faso · –

Kassoum fire, 2 November 2026 Kassoum

Dying down · last detection 4 Nov 2026, 14:01 UTC

The fire started on 2 November 2026 in Kassoum, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,044 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 304 in Burkina Faso in 2026, of 322.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kassoum · 2026Gassan · 2026Gassan · 2025Tougan · 2025

Is it still active?

No detections since 4 Nov 2026, 14:01 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Wind, humidity and rain for the next 72 h

Burnt area
1,044ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
2 Nov 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
2 Nov
2026
Heat detections
18
in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
54MW
detected power per day, on average

The next 72 hours

The wind is blowing from the north-east and pushing to the south-west; no sharp shifts are expected until Sun 8, 10:00.

ECMWF IFS 0.25° at the centre of the fire · computed 5 Nov 2026, 05:53 UTC

Sat 7, 20:00 – Sun 8, 07:00, local time

No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 52 %

Nights usually moisten the vegetation and the fire calms down. Tonight humidity does not reach 55 %, so it may stay active in the small hours.

Checked, no warning: no wind shifts of more than 60° no useful rain expected (0.0 mm in 72 h)

Hour by hour, local time

Tap the strip to see each hour

Mean wind Gusts where it blows to Relative humidity Night (8 pm to 8 am) Rain (mm) · chance in %

Where is it blowing? The next 48 h

geoBoundaries/DNCT - Direction Nationale des Colelctivités Territorielles, DNP - Direction Nationale de la Population, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Mali (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)); OCHA COD-AB/Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO))

At this hour

Places the fan reaches

    Is it heading my way?

    We compare your point with the fan for each hour. Your location never leaves your device.

    or tap the map

    This is not an official warning. It is a global model forecast with cells of about 25 km, at the centre of the fire: it cannot see valley winds or the winds the fire itself creates. The fan shows where the wind blows, not where the fire will spread. If in doubt, follow what the authorities say.

    Forecast: ECMWF IFS 0.25° (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), served by our own Open-Meteo instance; the chance of rain comes from the ECMWF ensemble. Variables: wind and gusts at 10 m, wind at 850 hPa, relative humidity and temperature at 2 m, rain. Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).

    Fire: GWIS / Copernicus (reconstructed from VIIRS) (CC BY 4.0); hotspots from the last 24 h: VIIRS from NASA FIRMS. Boundaries: geoBoundaries/DNCT - Direction Nationale des Colelctivités Territorielles, DNP - Direction Nationale de la Population, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Mali (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)); OCHA COD-AB/Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO)).

    How it is worked out: wind shift = a change of more than 60° in 6 h or less, with at least 15 km/h before and after; no overnight recovery = peak humidity between 8 pm and 8 am stays below 55 %; useful rain = 2 mm or more in 6 h. The fan opens 18° plus however much the wind varies within ±3 h and reaches 25 km beyond the edge of the fire: one model cell, not a rate of spread. Methodology

    Where it burned

    HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Nov4 Nov
    4 Nov 2026

    How it evolved, day by day

    3 Nov 2026 · 52 MW · 8 4 Nov 2026 · 55 MW · 10
    3 Nov 4 Nov

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

    The weather it burned in

    38°high
    42km/h · peak gust
    22%lowest humidity

    It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

    This area had burned before

    No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

    How big is it?

    10 km
    It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (10 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. Kassoum where it started
      1,050 ha reached on 3 Nov
      1.5 %

    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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

    Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
    2 Nov 37.9 °C 22 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
    3 Nov 38.4 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
    4 Nov 37.0 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
    5 Nov after 38.8 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

    Before and after, from space

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

    Before · 26 Oct 2026
    After · 4 Nov 2026

    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 2 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

    PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
    Days over the guideline4 days
    PM1082 µg/m³
    Optical depth0.44
    311234
    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 · 18Every 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 Burkina Faso

    Frequently asked questions

    How long did the Kassoum fire last?
    According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 November 2026 to 4 November 2026 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 November 2026 to 4 November 2026.
    How much area did it burn?
    The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,044 hectares (10.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
    Which municipalities burned?
    The fire only entered Kassoum (1,050 ha, 1.5 %).
    Is the Kassoum fire still active?
    No fire detections since 4 Nov 2026, 14:01 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
    What was the weather like?
    During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very high.
    What weather is expected at the fire over the next 72 hours?
    The wind is blowing from the north-east and pushing to the south-west; no sharp shifts are expected until Sun 8, 10:00. No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 52 % (Sat 7, 20:00 – Sun 8, 07:00). Times are local time at the fire. ECMWF IFS forecast (Open-Meteo) computed 5 Nov 2026, 05:53 UTC; this is not an official warning.
    Where does this data come from?
    From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 5 November 2026.
    1. Page published (1,044 ha).

    RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

    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 November 2026 to 4 November 2026. 18 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
    • We have not matched this page with any official record.
    • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

    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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO)). 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.