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Mafa fire, 27 December 2025 Mafa

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2026, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 27 December 2025 in Mafa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,720 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 29th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 36 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Burnt area
7,720ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
27 Dec 2025 – 27 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
27 Dec
2025
Heat detections
257
in a single hotspot: 118 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

28 Jan 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Dec27 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

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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
34km/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

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,729 ha in 2016, 5,143 ha in 2017, 565 ha in 2019, 1,708 ha in 2020, 2,084 ha in 2021, 1,391 ha in 2022, 6,243 ha in 2023, 6,045 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,481 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mafa where it started
    7,771 ha reached on 20 Dec
    2.3 %

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)
27 Dec 36.7 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Dec 37.2 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Dec 37.0 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Dec 37.4 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Dec 37.0 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Jan 36.5 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Jan 35.4 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Jan 34.2 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Jan 33.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Jan 33.2 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Jan 34.0 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Jan 35.1 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jan 33.8 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Jan 32.2 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Jan 29.1 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jan 31.2 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Jan 32.3 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Jan 31.4 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Jan 30.7 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jan 31.5 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Jan 34.1 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jan 34.5 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Jan 35.1 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Jan 35.6 °C 17 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Jan 36.8 °C 18 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jan 36.5 °C 16 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Jan 32.3 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jan 33.0 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Jan 33.6 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jan 34.1 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Jan 33.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Jan 30.9 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Jan after 32.9 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Jan after 34.6 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Jan after 34.2 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Jan after 35.3 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Feb after 36.5 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Feb after 37.2 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Feb after 37.5 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Feb after 37.7 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Feb after 38.1 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Feb after 38.0 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Dec 2025
After · 3 Feb 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 10 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 126 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 108: 7.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak126 µg/m³
Days over the guideline37 days
PM10548 µg/m³
Optical depth0.62
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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 · 257Every 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 27 December 2025 and 27 January 2026: 32 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 7,720 hectares (77.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mafa (7,771 ha, 2.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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.