Mafa fire, 24 October 2026 Mafa
The fire started on 24 October 2026 in Mafa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,315 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 365th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 494 with a page). Number 243 in Nigeria in 2026, of 313.
The power measured by the satellite is low (18.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mafa · 2019Mafa · 2020Mafa · 2022Mafa · 2025
Is it still active?
No detections since 2 Nov 2026, 01:04 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 2,315ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 24 Oct 2026 – 2 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 24 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 35
- in a single hotspot: 19 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 37MW
- 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 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 133 ha in 2017, 840 ha in 2018, 1,091 ha in 2019, 847 ha in 2020, 219 ha in 2021, 625 ha in 2022, 19 ha in 2023, 272 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,112 ha that had burned before.
- 1,091 ha Mafa fire, November 2019 2,497 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 646 ha Mafa fire, November 2020 2,320 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 625 ha Mafa fire, November 2022 2,588 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 272 ha Mafa fire, October 2025 2,716 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 133 ha Mafa fire, February 2017 12,460 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 started2,330 ha reached on 24 Oct0.7 %
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Oct | 35.5 °C | 16 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 25 Oct | 35.4 °C | 14 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Oct | 36.3 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 27 Oct | 36.9 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 28 Oct | 37.3 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 29 Oct | 37.5 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 30 Oct | 38.0 °C | 16 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 31 Oct | 38.0 °C | 21 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Nov | 39.2 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Nov | 37.7 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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 31 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 112 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 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 · 35Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,460 haMafaFebruary 2017 · 18 days · 9 km away
- 10,469 haMafaJanuary 2023 · 16 days · 10 km away
- 16,241 haMafa1 November 2020 · 20 days · 26 km away
- 14,575 haNganzai17 October 2025 · 14 days · 34 km away
- 9,310 haMafa20 October 2023 · 5 days · 36 km away
- 9,591 haKonduga3 November 2023 · 8 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mafa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 October 2026 to 2 November 2026 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 October 2026 to 1 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,315 hectares (23.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mafa (2,330 ha, 0.7 %).
- Is the Mafa fire still active?
- No fire detections since 2 Nov 2026, 01:04 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 2 November 2026.
- Page published (2,315 ha).
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 October 2026 to 1 November 2026. 35 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.