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Mafa fire, January 2023 Mafa

Out · last detection 30 Jan 2023, 12:06 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2023 in Mafa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,469 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 457 with a page). Number 8 in Nigeria in 2023, of 161.

Burnt area
10,469ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
15 Jan 2023 – 30 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Jan
2023
Heat detections
319
in a single hotspot: 296 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Jan 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan30 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

16171821222324252627282930

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
29km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,295 ha in 2016, 8,000 ha in 2017, 603 ha in 2018, 1,423 ha in 2019, 1,618 ha in 2020, 7,215 ha in 2021, 1,283 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,003 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mafa where it started
    10,537 ha reached on 16 Jan
    3.1 %

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)
15 Jan 30.2 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Jan 30.0 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Jan 29.8 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jan 30.5 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Jan 33.1 °C 18 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jan 33.4 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Jan 33.8 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Jan 33.6 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jan 34.9 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Jan 35.9 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jan 36.1 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jan 36.1 °C 12 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jan 38.3 °C 12 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Jan 38.0 °C 14 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Jan 38.5 °C 15 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Jan 38.9 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
31 Jan after 37.6 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Feb after 35.0 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
2 Feb after 33.8 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Feb after 34.9 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
4 Feb after 36.4 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Feb after 36.9 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Feb after 36.0 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
7 Feb after 35.0 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Feb after 35.0 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Feb after 35.5 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jan 2023
After · 6 Feb 2023

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 · 319Every 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 15 January 2023 and 30 January 2023: 16 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 10,469 hectares (104.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mafa (10,537 ha, 3.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.

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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.