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Morondava fire, September 2018 Morondava

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2018, 10:27 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2018 in Morondava, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,039 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 17th largest in Menabe since 2016 (of 98 with a page). Number 7 in Madagascar in 2018, of 48.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Morondava · 2017Morondava · 2017Morondava · 2026Morondava · 2018

Burnt area
5,039ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
27 Sept 2018 – 24 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Sept
2018
Heat detections
312
in a single hotspot: 174 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
96MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept24 Oct
25 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2018 · 27 MW · 8 28 Sept 2018 · 24 MW · 7 29 Sept 2018 · 30 MW · 7 30 Sept 2018 · 22 MW · 4 1 Oct 2018 · 553 MW · 58 2 Oct 2018 · 196 MW · 14 3 Oct 2018 · 66 MW · 12 4 Oct 2018 · 83 MW · 8 5 Oct 2018 · 6 MW · 2 6 Oct 2018 · 14 MW · 4 7 Oct 2018 · 33 MW · 7 8 Oct 2018 · 60 MW · 12 9 Oct 2018 · 14 MW · 2 11 Oct 2018 · 31 MW · 4 13 Oct 2018 · 80 MW · 6 14 Oct 2018 · 481 MW · 19 15 Oct 2018 · 102 MW · 10 17 Oct 2018 · 72 MW · 7 18 Oct 2018 · 49 MW · 4 19 Oct 2018 · 196 MW · 21 20 Oct 2018 · 96 MW · 13 21 Oct 2018 · 48 MW · 12 22 Oct 2018 · 14 MW · 5 23 Oct 2018 · 119 MW · 14 24 Oct 2018 · 42 MW · 11 25 Oct 2018 · 40 MW · 5
27 Sept 1 Oct 5 Oct 9 Oct 15 Oct 20 Oct 24 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
59km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,084 ha in 2016, 6,369 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,472 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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. Morondava where it started
    5,050 ha reached on 20 Sept
    0.9 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.12 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
27 Sept 32.6 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
28 Sept 32.9 °C 44 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm High 25
29 Sept 31.2 °C 52 % 39 km/h 3.4 mm Low 8
30 Sept 33.1 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Oct 33.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct 32.0 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Oct 34.5 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Oct 34.2 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Oct 32.0 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Oct 30.5 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Oct 30.8 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Oct 32.4 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Oct 32.5 °C 38 % 35 km/h 5.1 mm Low 7
10 Oct 34.0 °C 37 % 36 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 18
11 Oct 33.8 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
12 Oct 32.8 °C 40 % 37 km/h 3.2 mm Low 10
13 Oct 33.2 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
14 Oct 35.2 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Oct 34.3 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Oct 33.5 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Oct 33.1 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Oct 33.4 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Oct 33.2 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Oct 33.4 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Oct 31.3 °C 31 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Oct 29.1 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Oct 32.7 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Oct 34.4 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Oct after 33.3 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Oct after 31.7 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Oct after 31.8 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Oct after 31.2 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Oct after 31.0 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Oct after 31.4 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Oct after 33.0 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Nov after 35.4 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Nov after 33.8 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Nov after 34.0 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2018
After · 31 Oct 2018

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 · 312Every 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 Madagascar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Morondava fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 September 2018 and 24 October 2018: 28 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 5,039 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Morondava (5,050 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Madagascar (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.

Satellite cross-check

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 312 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 2020, 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 ADM2 (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.