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ML · Mali · –

Koussané fire, 23 October 2026 Koussané

Dying down · last detection 3 Nov 2026, 14:20 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2026 in Koussané, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,032 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 164 in Mali in 2026, of 168.

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 (25.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Is it still active?

No detections since 3 Nov 2026, 14:20 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.

Burnt area
2,032ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
23 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
23 Oct
2026
Heat detections
32
in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
51MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct3 Nov
3 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 24 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 25 Oct 2026 · 8 MW · 2 26 Oct 2026 · 20 MW · 4 27 Oct 2026 · 27 MW · 3 28 Oct 2026 · 23 MW · 3 29 Oct 2026 · 226 MW · 19 1 Nov 2026 · 2 MW · 1 2 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 3 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0
23 Oct 25 Oct 27 Oct 29 Oct 2 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

39°high
41km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 403 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (20 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. Koussané where it started
    2,043 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.6 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
23 Oct 39.2 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Oct 38.0 °C 28 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Oct 38.9 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Oct 37.5 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Oct 35.2 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Oct 35.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Oct 35.0 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Oct 35.3 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
31 Oct 33.1 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
1 Nov 35.8 °C 25 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Nov 36.6 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Nov 36.5 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Nov after 35.2 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 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 28 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 69 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak69 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10267 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
21 Oct24 Oct27 Oct30 Oct2 Nov
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 · 32Every 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 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 23 October 2026 to 3 November 2026 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 October 2026 to 3 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,032 hectares (20.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Koussané (2,043 ha, 0.6 %).
Is the Koussané fire still active?
No fire detections since 3 Nov 2026, 14:20 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 4 November 2026.
  1. Page published (2,032 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 25 October 2026 to 3 November 2026. 32 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.
  • 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 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.