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SN · Senegal · –

Missira fire, 11 January 2026 Missira

Out · last detection 30 Jan 2026, 14:43 UTC

The fire started on 11 January 2026 in Missira, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,907 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 5 in Senegal in 2026, of 132.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
19,907ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
11 Jan 2026 – 30 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Jan
2026
Heat detections
316
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
116MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jan30 Jan
30 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jan 2026 · 19 MW · 5 12 Jan 2026 · 2 MW · 1 13 Jan 2026 · 33 MW · 4 14 Jan 2026 · 456 MW · 23 15 Jan 2026 · 6 MW · 2 16 Jan 2026 · 686 MW · 53 17 Jan 2026 · 358 MW · 58 18 Jan 2026 · 183 MW · 31 19 Jan 2026 · 180 MW · 31 20 Jan 2026 · 80 MW · 16 21 Jan 2026 · 64 MW · 16 22 Jan 2026 · 9 MW · 12 23 Jan 2026 · 3 MW · 4 24 Jan 2026 · 1 MW · 2 25 Jan 2026 · 9 MW · 7 26 Jan 2026 · 146 MW · 13 27 Jan 2026 · 27 MW · 10 28 Jan 2026 · 25 MW · 15 29 Jan 2026 · 18 MW · 10 30 Jan 2026 · 12 MW · 3
11 Jan 16 Jan 19 Jan 23 Jan 27 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

39°high
44km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,736 ha in 2016, 5,749 ha in 2017, 4,373 ha in 2018, 2,146 ha in 2019, 6,015 ha in 2021, 1,587 ha in 2022, 800 ha in 2023, 3,131 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,627 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (199 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

  1. Missira where it started
    20,080 ha reached on 11 Jan
    2.4 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 79 % of the area in Senegal

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
11 Jan 37.5 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Jan 37.3 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jan 38.0 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Jan 38.1 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jan 37.7 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Jan 38.7 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Jan 38.1 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
18 Jan 35.8 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Jan 34.5 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Jan 32.9 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Jan 33.5 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Jan 32.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Jan 36.2 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jan 36.4 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Jan 33.2 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Jan 35.8 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Jan 37.0 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Jan 38.0 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Jan 38.5 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Jan 39.3 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
31 Jan after 39.9 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
1 Feb after 38.3 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Feb after 38.5 °C 18 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Feb after 39.3 °C 16 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Feb after 31.9 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Feb after 36.5 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Feb after 35.5 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Feb after 39.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Feb after 38.4 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Feb after 39.0 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jan 2026
After · 6 Feb 2026

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 25 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 97 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak97 µg/m³
Days over the guideline23 days
PM10421 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
11 Jan16 Jan21 Jan26 Jan31 Jan
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 · 316Every 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 Senegal

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Missira fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 January 2026 to 30 January 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 January 2026 to 30 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,907 hectares (199.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Missira (20,080 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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.
  1. Start date: 13 January 2026 → 11 January 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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?

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 January 2026 to 30 January 2026. 316 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.

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.