Mafa fire, January 2026 Mafa
The fire started on 3 January 2026 in Mafa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,764 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 119th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 79 in Nigeria in 2026, of 262.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mafa · 2021Mafa · 2023Mafa · 2017Mafa · 2023
- Burnt area
- 3,764ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 3 Jan 2026 – 12 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 3 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 124
- in a single hotspot: 100 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 164MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,943 ha in 2017, 452 ha in 2018, 832 ha in 2019, 3,746 ha in 2021, 13 ha in 2022, 4,029 ha in 2023, 956 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,766 ha that had burned before.
- 2,887 ha Mafa fire, January 2021 7,491 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,790 ha Mafa fire, January 2023 10,469 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,454 ha Mafa fire, January 2017 4,477 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,238 ha Mafa fire, February 2023 2,291 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mafa where it started3,788 ha reached on 3 Jan1.1 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jan | 34.2 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 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 46 |
| 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 45 |
| 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 38 |
| 11 Jan | 31.2 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 12 Jan | 32.3 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 13 Jan after | 31.4 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 14 Jan after | 30.7 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Jan after | 31.5 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Jan after | 34.1 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Jan after | 34.5 °C | 16 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 18 Jan after | 35.1 °C | 16 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 19 Jan after | 35.6 °C | 17 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 20 Jan after | 36.8 °C | 18 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Jan after | 36.5 °C | 16 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Jan after | 32.3 °C | 16 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
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 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).
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 · 124Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,469 haMafaJanuary 2023 · 16 days · 10 km away
- 7,720 haMafa27 December 2025 · 32 days · 10 km away
- 12,460 haMafaFebruary 2017 · 11 days · 11 km away
- 14,575 haNganzai17 October 2025 · 12 days · 34 km away
- 16,241 haMafa2 November 2020 · 18 days · 39 km away
- 9,591 haKonduga5 November 2023 · 4 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mafa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2026 and 12 January 2026: 10 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 3,764 hectares (37.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mafa (3,788 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 124 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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.