How long did the Mashegu fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 December 2020 to 20 January 2021 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2021 to 13 January 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,809 hectares (48.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mashegu (4,839 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 27 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.

NG · Nigeria · 2020-12-31 → 2021-01-20

Mashegu fire, December 2020 Mashegu

Out · last detection 17 Jan 2021, 12:35 UTC

The fire started on 31 December 2020 in Mashegu, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,809 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 65th largest in Niger since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 20 in Nigeria in 2020, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mashegu · 2020 Mashegu · 2019 Mashegu · 2025 Mashegu · 2025

Burnt area: 4,809ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 31 Dec 2020 – 20 Jan 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 31 Dec; 2020
Heat detections: 172; in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 66MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Dec20 Jan

Play back 17 Jan 2021

How it evolved, day by day

31 Dec 3 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 12 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan

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

27km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 777 ha in 2016, 390 ha in 2019, 649 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Mashegu where it started

4,839 ha reached on 31 Dec

0.6 %

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	Danger (FWI)
7 Jan	36.8 °C	18 %	27 km/h	Very high 43
8 Jan	36.4 °C	19 %	25 km/h	Very high 42
9 Jan	37.1 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Very high 43
10 Jan	36.4 °C	19 %	23 km/h	Very high 43
11 Jan	36.2 °C	20 %	22 km/h	Very high 44
12 Jan	35.3 °C	20 %	26 km/h	Very high 47
13 Jan	35.5 °C	18 %	19 km/h	Very high 43
14 Jan	35.4 °C	16 %	25 km/h	Very high 45
15 Jan	35.1 °C	18 %	23 km/h	Very high 45
16 Jan	35.1 °C	15 %	24 km/h	Very high 47
17 Jan	35.1 °C	16 %	23 km/h	Very high 46
18 Jan	34.7 °C	18 %	23 km/h	Very high 47
19 Jan	34.7 °C	16 %	28 km/h	Very high 47
20 Jan	33.3 °C	17 %	30 km/h	Very high 50
21 Jan after	33.5 °C	19 %	29 km/h	Very high 46
22 Jan after	32.8 °C	17 %	30 km/h	Very high 47
23 Jan after	32.8 °C	16 %	20 km/h	Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Dec 2020

After · 27 Jan 2021

Before After

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 · 172Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mashegu fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 December 2020 to 20 January 2021 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2021 to 13 January 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,809 hectares (48.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mashegu (4,839 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 27 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

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 7 January 2021 to 13 January 2021. 172 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned