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Mayo-Dallah fire, November 2021 Mayo-Dallah

Out · last detection 11 Dec 2021, 11:46 UTC

The fire started on 19 November 2021 in Mayo-Dallah, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,078 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Mayo-Kebbi Ouest since 2016 (of 15 with a page). Number 6 in Chad in 2021, of 197.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mayo-Dallah · 2026Mayo-Dallah · 2021Mayo-Dallah · 2026Mayo-Dallah · 2026

Burnt area
9,078ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
19 Nov 2021 – 11 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
19 Nov
2021
Heat detections
345
in a single hotspot: 269 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
166MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Nov11 Dec
11 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

19 Nov 2021 · 7 MW · 1 20 Nov 2021 · 56 MW · 8 22 Nov 2021 · 25 MW · 5 23 Nov 2021 · 8 MW · 3 24 Nov 2021 · 30 MW · 3 25 Nov 2021 · 159 MW · 12 26 Nov 2021 · 447 MW · 32 27 Nov 2021 · 280 MW · 16 28 Nov 2021 · 142 MW · 13 29 Nov 2021 · 83 MW · 7 30 Nov 2021 · 34 MW · 7 1 Dec 2021 · 578 MW · 39 2 Dec 2021 · 242 MW · 43 3 Dec 2021 · 392 MW · 44 4 Dec 2021 · 817 MW · 54 5 Dec 2021 · 79 MW · 16 6 Dec 2021 · 7 MW · 5 7 Dec 2021 · 3 MW · 3 8 Dec 2021 · 42 MW · 10 9 Dec 2021 · 12 MW · 5 10 Dec 2021 · 167 MW · 10 11 Dec 2021 · 41 MW · 9
19 Nov 24 Nov 28 Nov 2 Dec 4 Dec 6 Dec 10 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
36km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 727 ha in 2016, 999 ha in 2017, 812 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (91 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

  1. Mayo-Dallah where it started
    9,134 ha reached on 19 Nov
    1.1 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area0.12 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
19 Nov 37.2 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Nov 37.8 °C 25 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Nov 37.1 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Nov 36.9 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Nov 37.2 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Nov 36.9 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Nov 36.0 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Nov 36.0 °C 19 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Nov 35.5 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Nov 37.0 °C 15 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Nov 37.1 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Nov 37.6 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Dec 37.3 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Dec 34.9 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Dec 35.2 °C 24 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Dec 36.7 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Dec 36.0 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Dec 35.6 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Dec 34.7 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Dec 35.1 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Dec 34.0 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Dec 33.9 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Dec 35.0 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Dec after 35.4 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Dec after 36.2 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Dec after 35.3 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Dec after 32.9 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Dec after 32.1 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Dec after 31.6 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Dec after 30.7 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Dec after 30.8 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Dec after 31.5 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Dec after 32.0 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Nov 2021
After · 18 Dec 2021

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 · 345Every 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 Chad ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mayo-Dallah fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 November 2021 to 11 December 2021 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 November 2021 to 5 December 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,078 hectares (90.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mayo-Dallah (9,134 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chad (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.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 5 December 2021 → 11 December 2021.
  2. Start date: 24 November 2021 → 19 November 2021.

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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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 November 2021 to 5 December 2021. 345 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.