How long did the Mion fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 December 2024 and 31 December 2024: 7 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 2,220 hectares (22.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mion (2,233 ha, 0.8 %).

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.

GH · Ghana · 2024-12-25 → 2024-12-31

Mion fire, December 2024 Mion

Out · last detection 31 Dec 2024, 01:56 UTC

The fire started on 25 December 2024 in Mion, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,220 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 200th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 262 with a page). Number 94 in Ghana in 2024, of 115.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 2,220ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 25 Dec 2024 – 31 Dec 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 25 Dec; 2024
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 21 MW
Energy released: 365MW; sum of detected power

Play back 31 Dec 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Dec31 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

25262728293031

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

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 420 ha in 2021, 129 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 433 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Mion where it started

2,233 ha reached on 25 Dec

0.8 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Dec 2024

After · 7 Jan 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 24 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 103 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 84: 5.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak103 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM10418 µg/m³

Optical depth0.87

WHO 15

232425262728293031123

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 74Every 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 Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mion fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 December 2024 and 31 December 2024: 7 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 2,220 hectares (22.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mion (2,233 ha, 0.8 %).
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

Where it burned