How long did the Kurmi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 March 2026 and 25 March 2026: 9 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 2,456 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kurmi (2,472 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

NG · Nigeria · 2026-03-17 → 2026-03-25

Kurmi fire, 17 March 2026 Kurmi

Out · last detection 26 Mar 2026, 12:29 UTC

The fire started on 17 March 2026 in Kurmi, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,456 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 99th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 180 in Nigeria in 2026, of 262.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kurmi · 2017 Kurmi · 2023 Kurmi · 2020 Kurmi · 2026

Burnt area: 2,456ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 17 Mar 2026 – 25 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 42; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 37MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 26 Mar 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Mar25 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

18 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar 24 Mar 26 Mar

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

35km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 26 Mar.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 694 ha in 2017, 555 ha in 2019, 1,250 ha in 2020, 880 ha in 2021, 622 ha in 2022, 151 ha in 2023, 132 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,635 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

Kurmi where it started

2,472 ha reached on 15 Mar

0.6 %

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)
17 Mar	34.4 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
18 Mar	34.6 °C	45 %	32 km/h	1.8 mm	Low 10
19 Mar	35.7 °C	42 %	30 km/h	9.9 mm	Very low 3
20 Mar	37.0 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
21 Mar	37.0 °C	18 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
22 Mar	36.5 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
23 Mar	35.3 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
24 Mar	34.5 °C	44 %	28 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 18
25 Mar	34.8 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Mar after	34.3 °C	53 %	30 km/h	6.3 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Mar 2026

After · 1 Apr 2026

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 15 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM10133 µg/m³

Optical depth0.63

WHO 15

1516171819202122232425262728

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 · 42Every 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 Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kurmi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 March 2026 and 25 March 2026: 9 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 2,456 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kurmi (2,472 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (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: 112

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 112.

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. 42 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 ADM2 (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