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Mafa fire, January 2021 Mafa

Out · last detection 2 Feb 2021, 12:35 UTC

The fire started on 23 January 2021 in Mafa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,491 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 457 with a page). Number 14 in Nigeria in 2021, of 184.

Burnt area
7,491ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
23 Jan 2021 – 2 Feb 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
23 Jan
2021
Heat detections
254
in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Energy released
4.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Feb 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jan2 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

232426272829303112

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
36km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 128 ha in 2016, 5,165 ha in 2017, 901 ha in 2018, 1,127 ha in 2019, 242 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,271 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mafa where it started
    7,539 ha reached on 18 Jan
    2.2 %

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)
23 Jan 29.7 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Jan 30.3 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Jan 32.5 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Jan 33.7 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Jan 33.6 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jan 32.6 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Jan 30.2 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Jan 30.5 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jan 31.8 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Feb 32.4 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Feb 32.8 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Feb after 31.8 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Feb after 31.1 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Feb after 29.9 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Feb after 31.3 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Feb after 33.0 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Feb after 34.6 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Feb after 34.7 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Feb after 33.6 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Feb after 33.6 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Feb after 33.7 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jan 2021
After · 9 Feb 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 254Every 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 Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mafa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 January 2021 and 2 February 2021: 11 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 7,491 hectares (74.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mafa (7,539 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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

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?

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.

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.