How long did the Koussané fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 October 2025 to 4 November 2025 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2025 to 4 November 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,204 hectares (42.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Koussané (4,233 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 36 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 Mali (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

ML · Mali · 2025-10-28 → 2025-11-04

Koussané fire, 28 October 2025 Koussané

Out · last detection 4 Nov 2025, 13:32 UTC

The fire started on 28 October 2025 in Koussané, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,204 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 55th largest in Kayes since 2016 (of 346 with a page). Number 72 in Mali in 2025, of 282.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Koussané · 2026 Koussané · 2022 Koussané · 2022 Koussané · 2026

Burnt area: 4,204ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 28 Oct 2025 – 4 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 28 Oct; 2025
Heat detections: 93; in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 135MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Oct4 Nov

Play back 4 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

28 Oct 29 Oct 1 Nov 2 Nov 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

40°high

36km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days 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?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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

Koussané where it started

4,233 ha reached on 28 Oct

1.3 %

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	Danger (FWI)
1 Nov	37.8 °C	33 %	28 km/h	High 28
2 Nov	39.3 °C	16 %	19 km/h	High 35
3 Nov	39.6 °C	13 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
4 Nov	37.5 °C	20 %	22 km/h	Very high 39
5 Nov after	37.1 °C	32 %	27 km/h	High 32
6 Nov after	36.6 °C	33 %	30 km/h	High 33
7 Nov after	36.7 °C	31 %	27 km/h	High 32
8 Nov after	37.2 °C	31 %	25 km/h	High 32
9 Nov after	34.6 °C	22 %	26 km/h	High 34
10 Nov after	37.7 °C	21 %	20 km/h	High 36
11 Nov after	35.4 °C	32 %	25 km/h	High 36
12 Nov after	37.4 °C	25 %	18 km/h	High 32
13 Nov after	38.2 °C	19 %	35 km/h	Very high 42
14 Nov after	38.3 °C	20 %	14 km/h	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Oct 2025

After · 11 Nov 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 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak63 µg/m³

Days over the guideline6 days

PM10199 µg/m³

Optical depth0.43

WHO 15

30311234567

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 · 93Every 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 Mali ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Koussané fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 October 2025 to 4 November 2025 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2025 to 4 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,204 hectares (42.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Koussané (4,233 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 36 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 Mali (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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?

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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 1 November 2025 to 4 November 2025. 93 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.

Where it burned