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Mafa fire, 20 October 2023 Mafa

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2023, 13:14 UTC

The fire started on 20 October 2023 in Mafa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,310 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 22th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 10 in Nigeria in 2023, of 161.

Burnt area
9,310ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
20 Oct 2023 – 20 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Oct
2023
Heat detections
238
in a single hotspot: 189 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Oct20 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

20

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
31km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,974 ha in 2016, 209 ha in 2017, 529 ha in 2020, 2,758 ha in 2021, 1,087 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,735 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mafa where it started
    9,363 ha reached on 20 Oct
    2.7 %

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)
20 Oct 36.5 °C 31 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Oct after 37.0 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Oct after 37.4 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Oct after 36.9 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Oct after 37.0 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Oct after 36.5 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Oct after 37.2 °C 21 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Oct after 37.3 °C 21 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Oct after 37.7 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Oct after 38.4 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Oct after 38.0 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Oct after 37.5 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Nov after 36.9 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Nov after 36.7 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Nov after 36.1 °C 34 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Oct 2023
After · 27 Oct 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 · 238Every 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 20 October 2023 and 20 October 2023: 1 day 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 9,310 hectares (93.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mafa (9,363 ha, 2.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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

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
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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.