How long did the Missira fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 January 2016 and 17 January 2016: 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 4,139 hectares (41.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Missira (4,126 ha, 0.5 %); Bandafassi (36 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SN · Senegal · 2016-01-14 → 2016-01-17

Missira fire, 14 January 2016 Missira, Bandafassi

Out · last detection 18 Jan 2016, 13:17 UTC

The fire started on 14 January 2016 in Missira, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,139 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 56th largest in Tambacounda since 2016 (of 291 with a page). Number 8 in Senegal in 2016, of 58.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Missira · 2024 Bandafassi · 2026 Bandafassi · 2023 Bandafassi · 2020

Burnt area: 4,139ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 14 Jan 2016 – 17 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 14 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 111; in a single hotspot: 118 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 366MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jan17 Jan

Play back 18 Jan 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jan 15 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 18 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

38°high

40km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

Missira where it started

4,126 ha reached on 14 Jan

0.5 %
Bandafassi

36 ha

0.0 %

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)
14 Jan	38.0 °C	12 %	24 km/h	Very high 47
15 Jan	36.1 °C	21 %	20 km/h	Very high 42
16 Jan	37.9 °C	10 %	34 km/h	Extreme 55
17 Jan	37.8 °C	6 %	40 km/h	Extreme 62
18 Jan after	38.0 °C	9 %	29 km/h	Extreme 53
19 Jan after	37.2 °C	11 %	30 km/h	Extreme 53
20 Jan after	34.8 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
21 Jan after	32.6 °C	17 %	26 km/h	Very high 47
22 Jan after	32.0 °C	11 %	28 km/h	Very high 50
23 Jan after	36.4 °C	11 %	52 km/h	Extreme 64
24 Jan after	36.8 °C	6 %	41 km/h	Extreme 64
25 Jan after	37.8 °C	10 %	41 km/h	Extreme 66
26 Jan after	36.6 °C	11 %	39 km/h	Extreme 64
27 Jan after	32.9 °C	17 %	52 km/h	Extreme 68

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Jan 2016

After · 24 Jan 2016

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 · 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Senegal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Missira fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 January 2016 and 17 January 2016: 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 4,139 hectares (41.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Missira (4,126 ha, 0.5 %); Bandafassi (36 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (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: 18 · 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?

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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 18.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 111 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 ADM3 (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.

Where it burned