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KE · Kenya · –

North Horr fire, June 2025 North Horr

Out · last detection 30 Jun 2025, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 26 June 2025 in North Horr, Kenya, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,525 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Marsabit since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 14 in Kenya in 2025, of 24.

The power measured by the satellite is low (17.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,525ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
26 Jun 2025 – 1 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
constituencies
Started on
26 Jun
2025
Heat detections
24
in a single hotspot: 18 MW
Danger at start
65
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
66MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jun1 Jul
30 Jun 2025

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jun 2025 · 24 MW · 3 29 Jun 2025 · 168 MW · 20 30 Jun 2025 · 6 MW · 1
26 Jun 29 Jun 30 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
59km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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. North Horr where it started
    1,537 ha reached on 26 Jun
    0.0 %

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 Strong wind: 13 % of the area in Kenya

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
26 Jun 35.5 °C 28 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
27 Jun 36.1 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Jun 35.2 °C 30 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Jun 34.1 °C 29 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
30 Jun 33.6 °C 27 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
1 Jul 34.1 °C 28 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
2 Jul after 35.2 °C 26 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
3 Jul after 35.9 °C 24 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
4 Jul after 34.7 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
5 Jul after 34.5 °C 31 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Jul after 34.5 °C 33 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
7 Jul after 32.0 °C 33 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Jul after 34.9 °C 28 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
9 Jul after 34.0 °C 28 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Jul after 32.5 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Jul after 29.6 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 64.7, a minimum humidity of 28% and 35 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 11.

FWI at the start 64.7
Minimum humidity 28 %
Days without rain 35
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Laisamis fire, February 2019
1,964 ha 1 day FWI 65.6 Min. humidity 23 % 194 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 11. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
59km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 1 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jun 2025
After · 8 Jul 2025

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 2 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1051 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
24 Jun27 Jun30 Jun3 Jul
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 · 24Every 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 Kenya

Frequently asked questions

How long did the North Horr fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 June 2025 and 1 July 2025: 6 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 1,525 hectares (15.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered North Horr (1,537 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Kenya (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: 999 · 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.

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 999 · 112.

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. 24 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 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.