Madingring fire, 6 December 2025 Rey-Bouba, Madingring
The fire started on 6 December 2025 in Madingring, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,554 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 84th largest in North since 2016 (of 1648 with a page). Number 59 in Cameroon in 2025, of 396.
- Burnt area
- 3,554ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 6 Dec 2025 – 14 Dec 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 6 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 47
- in a single hotspot: 35 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 354MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,252 ha in 2017, 1,438 ha in 2019, 568 ha in 2021, 1,334 ha in 2022, 1,539 ha in 2023, 781 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,156 ha that had burned before.
- 1,539 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2023 1,329 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,334 ha Rey-Bouba fire, November 2022 3,031 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,105 ha Rey-Bouba fire, November 2017 1,420 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,000 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2019 3,631 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 681 ha Rey-Bouba fire, November 2024 2,543 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 568 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2021 4,428 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 438 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2019 1,152 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 147 ha Rey-Bouba fire, December 2017 2,145 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
3,519 ha reached on 5 Dec0.4 %
-
Madingring where it started53 ha reached on 4 Dec0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Dec | 36.7 °C | 23 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Dec | 34.9 °C | 21 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Dec | 34.0 °C | 22 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Dec | 33.6 °C | 20 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 10 Dec | 34.2 °C | 22 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Dec | 34.5 °C | 22 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Dec | 36.2 °C | 19 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Dec | 37.6 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 14 Dec | 37.3 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 15 Dec after | 36.6 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 16 Dec after | 34.5 °C | 16 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Dec after | 33.6 °C | 17 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 18 Dec after | 34.7 °C | 19 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 19 Dec after | 36.3 °C | 19 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Dec after | 35.9 °C | 21 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Dec after | 36.3 °C | 19 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 22 Dec after | 35.0 °C | 18 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Dec after | 36.0 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Dec after | 36.7 °C | 14 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 12 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 70 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 59: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 47Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,814 haRey-Bouba5 December 2025 · 9 days · 9 km away
- 6,454 haRey-Bouba17 December 2019 · 5 days · 14 km away
- 5,524 haRey-Bouba24 January 2024 · 6 days · 16 km away
- 5,113 haRey-Bouba5 January 2020 · 4 days · 26 km away
- 9,049 haTcholliré11 December 2025 · 19 days · 30 km away
- 4,908 haRey-Bouba1 March 2024 · 7 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Madingring fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 December 2025 and 14 December 2025: 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 3,554 hectares (35.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rey-Bouba (3,519 ha, 0.4 %); Madingring (53 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cameroon (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
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
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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.