Missira fire, 10 January 2024 Missira
The fire started on 10 January 2024 in Missira, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,402 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 22th largest in Tambacounda since 2016 (of 293 with a page). Number 4 in Senegal in 2024, of 65.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,402ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 10 Jan 2024 – 15 Jan 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 10 Jan
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 200
- in a single hotspot: 66 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 313MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,159 ha in 2016, 5,876 ha in 2017, 304 ha in 2018, 2,756 ha in 2019, 2,879 ha in 2020, 2,423 ha in 2021, 2,757 ha in 2022, 4,857 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,411 ha that had burned before.
- 4,857 ha Missira fire, January 2023 23,888 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,501 ha Missira fire, January 2017 17,451 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,159 ha Missira fire, January 2016 10,315 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,728 ha Missira fire, December 2021 15,245 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,715 ha Missira fire, January 2020 5,647 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,625 ha Missira fire, January 2019 6,313 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,113 ha Missira fire, January 2021 2,601 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 304 ha Missira fire, January 2018 5,396 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started6,434 ha reached on 10 Jan0.8 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Jan | 35.9 °C | 21 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 11 Jan | 38.2 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 Jan | 38.5 °C | 21 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 13 Jan | 40.1 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Jan | 38.6 °C | 14 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 15 Jan | 37.0 °C | 22 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 16 Jan after | 37.5 °C | 25 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 17 Jan after | 39.0 °C | 17 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 18 Jan after | 38.8 °C | 19 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 19 Jan after | 36.9 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 20 Jan after | 34.6 °C | 27 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Jan after | 37.9 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 22 Jan after | 38.3 °C | 10 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 23 Jan after | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 24 Jan after | 36.6 °C | 14 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 8 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 68 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 200Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 23,888 haMissira12 January 2023 · 25 days · 10 km away
- 49,558 haMissira18 December 2025 · 46 days · 13 km away
- 32,881 haBandafassi14 January 2025 · 20 days · 23 km away
- 30,325 haBandafassi23 January 2016 · 22 days · 27 km away
- 131,818 haMissira9 January 2026 · 51 days · 29 km away
- 34,293 haBandafassi12 January 2023 · 10 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Missira fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 January 2024 to 15 January 2024 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 January 2024 to 14 January 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,402 hectares (64.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Missira (6,434 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 14 January 2024 → 15 January 2024.
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
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 10 January 2024 to 14 January 2024. 200 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.