Nanton fire, December 2017 Nanton, Mion, Tamale
The fire started on 28 December 2017 in Nanton, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,766 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 23th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 262 with a page). Number 23 in Ghana in 2017, of 116.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,766ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 28 Dec 2017 – 10 Jan 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 28 Dec
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 119
- in a single hotspot: 73 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 140MW
- 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 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 176 ha in 2016, 307 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 442 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Nanton where it started4,646 ha reached on 28 Dec9.7 %
-
94 ha0.0 %
-
55 ha reached on 2 Jan0.1 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.90 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2015, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Dec | 35.6 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 29 Dec | 34.7 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Dec | 34.5 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 31 Dec | 33.6 °C | 14 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 1 Jan | 33.5 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 2 Jan | 32.3 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 3 Jan | 32.0 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 4 Jan | 33.3 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Jan | 33.7 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 6 Jan | 33.0 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 7 Jan | 34.5 °C | 24 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 8 Jan | 35.8 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 9 Jan | 35.9 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Jan | 35.2 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 11 Jan after | 34.5 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 12 Jan after | 35.2 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 13 Jan after | 34.5 °C | 12 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 14 Jan after | 34.3 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 15 Jan after | 34.7 °C | 13 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 16 Jan after | 34.9 °C | 21 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Jan after | 35.2 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 18 Jan after | 36.0 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Jan after | 35.0 °C | 11 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Jan after | 35.4 °C | 12 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
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.
Detections table · 119Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,234 haTamaleJanuary 2024 · 7 days · 20 km away
- 5,581 haGushegu16 January 2026 · 15 days · 23 km away
- 7,527 haGushegu9 January 2020 · 9 days · 33 km away
- 5,932 haGusheguDecember 2018 · 7 days · 33 km away
- 11,226 haSavelugu30 December 2018 · 18 days · 36 km away
- 80,705 haNorth East Gonja8 January 2026 · 33 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Nanton fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 December 2017 and 10 January 2018: 14 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 4,766 hectares (47.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Nanton (4,646 ha, 9.7 %); Mion (94 ha, 0.0 %); Tamale (55 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
- 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 119 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 2015, 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 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.