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TD · Chad · –

Lac Iro fire, 5 November 2026 Lac Iro

Dying down · last detection 14 Nov 2026, 12:29 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 5 November 2026 in Lac Iro, Chad. It has been active for 10 days, with 160 heat detections and an area with fire of about 2,072 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across a single municipality.

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 (28.7 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…

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

No detections since 14 Nov 2026, 12:29 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.

Area with fire
≈ 2,072ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
5 Nov 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
5 Nov
2026
Heat detections
160
in a single hotspot: 29 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
143MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Nov14 Nov
14 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Nov 2026 · 161 MW · 24 6 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 7 Nov 2026 · 51 MW · 7 8 Nov 2026 · 24 MW · 5 9 Nov 2026 · 309 MW · 29 10 Nov 2026 · 104 MW · 12 11 Nov 2026 · 54 MW · 14 12 Nov 2026 · 200 MW · 36 13 Nov 2026 · 238 MW · 52 14 Nov 2026 · 143 MW · 23
5 Nov 7 Nov 9 Nov 11 Nov 13 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
41km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. Lac Iro where it started
    2,072 ha reached on 5 Nov
    0.1 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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

Started with Very dry air: 54 % of the area in Chad

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Nov 39.9 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Nov 39.5 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Nov 37.2 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
8 Nov 37.8 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
9 Nov 38.1 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
10 Nov 37.0 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
11 Nov 35.4 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
12 Nov 35.8 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Nov 36.2 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Nov 37.0 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Oct 2026
After · 14 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 12 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 45 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak45 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1081 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
1 Nov4 Nov7 Nov10 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 · 160Every 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 Chad

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lac Iro fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 5 November 2026 to 14 November 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 2,072 hectares with fire (20.7 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lac Iro (2,072 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Lac Iro fire still active?
No fire detections since 14 Nov 2026, 12:29 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chad (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 13 November 2026.
  1. Page published (≈ 2,030 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
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 2,072 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 160 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • 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 geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 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.