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Menge fire, 6 February 2020 Menge

Out · last detection 9 Feb 2020, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 6 February 2020 in Menge, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,464 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 245th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 65 in Ethiopia in 2020, of 177.

Burnt area
3,464ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
6 Feb 2020 – 9 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Feb
2020
Heat detections
109
in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Feb 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Feb9 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

6789

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
35km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,386 ha in 2016, 1,785 ha in 2017, 2,207 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,165 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Menge where it started
    3,485 ha reached on 5 Feb
    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)
6 Feb 32.3 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Feb 33.3 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Feb 34.0 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Feb 34.1 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 40
10 Feb after 32.5 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Feb after 30.1 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Feb after 30.5 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Feb after 32.8 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Feb after 33.9 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Feb after 32.7 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Feb after 33.0 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Feb after 35.5 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Feb after 34.5 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Feb after 34.6 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jan 2020
After · 16 Feb 2020

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 · 109Every 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 Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Menge fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 February 2020 and 9 February 2020: 4 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 3,464 hectares (34.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Menge (3,485 ha, 2.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ethiopia (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

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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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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.