How long did the Kilak fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 November 2025 to 7 December 2025 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 November 2025 to 5 December 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,086 hectares (30.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kilak (3,107 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

UG · Uganda · 2025-11-21 → 2025-12-07

Kilak fire, 21 November 2025 Kilak

Out · last detection 8 Dec 2025, 11:09 UTC

The fire started on 21 November 2025 in Kilak, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,086 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 115th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 24 in Uganda in 2025, of 226.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kilak · 2016 Kilak · 2021 Kilak · 2020 Aswa · 2016

Burnt area: 3,086ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 21 Nov 2025 – 7 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 21 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 57MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Nov7 Dec

Play back 8 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

24 Nov 26 Nov 28 Nov 1 Dec 2 Dec 3 Dec 7 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

37°high

43km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 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: 89 ha in 2016.

89 ha Kilak fire, February 2016 1,058 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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

Kilak where it started

3,107 ha reached on 24 Nov

0.7 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area3.4 ha

Residents≈ 450

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.4 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
23 Nov	33.8 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
24 Nov	34.8 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
25 Nov	35.3 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Nov	34.8 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
27 Nov	33.9 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
28 Nov	34.3 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
29 Nov	34.6 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
30 Nov	35.5 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
1 Dec	35.7 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Dec	36.8 °C	13 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
3 Dec	35.9 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Dec	36.1 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
5 Dec	35.4 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
6 Dec	35.0 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
7 Dec	35.3 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Dec after	35.4 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Dec after	35.4 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Dec after	32.9 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
11 Dec after	34.0 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
12 Dec after	30.9 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
13 Dec after	29.9 °C	40 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
14 Dec after	32.7 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Dec after	33.4 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Nov 2025

After · 14 Dec 2025

Before After

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 5 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³

Days over the guideline7 days

PM1040 µg/m³

Optical depth0.55

WHO 15

2122232425262728293012345678

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 · 74Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Uganda ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kilak fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 November 2025 to 7 December 2025 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 November 2025 to 5 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,086 hectares (30.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kilak (3,107 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (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.

Emergency number: 999 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 5 December 2025 → 7 December 2025.
27 October 2026 Start date: 23 November 2025 → 21 November 2025.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 999 · 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 November 2025 to 5 December 2025. 74 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.

Where it burned