Skip to content
worldfires
en
SN · Senegal · →

Nianing fire, April 2022 Nianing, Ndorna

Out · last detection 12 Apr 2022, 13:40 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2022 in Nianing, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,230 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 52th largest in Kolda since 2016 (of 195 with a page). Number 36 in Senegal in 2022, of 90.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ndorna · 2026Fafacourou · 2021Fafacourou · 2020Ndorna · 2020

Burnt area
3,230ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
5 Apr 2022 – 11 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
5 Apr
2022
Heat detections
124
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
95MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr11 Apr
12 Apr 2022

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2022 · 1 MW · 1 6 Apr 2022 · 232 MW · 39 7 Apr 2022 · 43 MW · 16 8 Apr 2022 · 252 MW · 39 9 Apr 2022 · 35 MW · 5 10 Apr 2022 · 57 MW · 6 11 Apr 2022 · 1 MW · 1 12 Apr 2022 · 136 MW · 13
5 Apr 7 Apr 8 Apr 9 Apr 11 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

44°high
36km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 137 ha in 2016, 1,202 ha in 2018, 326 ha in 2019, 1,149 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,843 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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. Nianing where it started
    2,022 ha reached on 4 Apr
    1.2 %
  2. Ndorna
    1,228 ha reached on 4 Apr
    0.6 %

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 area0.50 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.50 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
5 Apr 38.3 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Apr 40.5 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Apr 42.7 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 Apr 43.7 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
9 Apr 43.4 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
10 Apr 43.5 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Apr 40.8 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Apr after 39.7 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Apr after 38.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Apr after 39.7 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Apr after 39.1 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Apr after 39.1 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Apr after 39.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Apr after 37.9 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Apr after 38.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Apr after 39.4 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Apr after 41.0 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2022
After · 18 Apr 2022

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 · 124Every 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 Nianing fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 April 2022 and 11 April 2022: 7 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 3,230 hectares (32.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nianing (2,022 ha, 1.2 %); Ndorna (1,228 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 43.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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 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.

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 124 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 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.