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Mion fire, December 2021 Mion

Out · last detection 27 Dec 2021, 13:27 UTC

The fire started on 19 December 2021 in Mion, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,247 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 78th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 262 with a page). Number 20 in Ghana in 2021, of 86.

Burnt area
3,247ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
19 Dec 2021 – 26 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
19 Dec
2021
Heat detections
111
in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
858MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

27 Dec 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Dec26 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

192021222324252627

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
36km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 329 ha in 2016, 1,335 ha in 2017, 1,007 ha in 2018, 1,219 ha in 2019, 517 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,791 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mion where it started
    3,268 ha reached on 16 Dec
    1.2 %

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)
19 Dec 33.2 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Dec 31.8 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Dec 33.7 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Dec 33.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Dec 34.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Dec 33.9 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec 35.0 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Dec 35.6 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Dec after 33.9 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
28 Dec after 33.5 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Dec after 34.2 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Dec after 35.1 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Dec after 34.6 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jan after 35.0 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Jan after 34.7 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Jan after 31.4 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jan after 33.7 °C 15 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Jan after 32.4 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Dec 2021
After · 2 Jan 2022

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 · 111Every 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 Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mion fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 December 2021 and 26 December 2021: 8 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 3,247 hectares (32.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mion (3,268 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 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 Ghana (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

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.

Report an error
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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.

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.