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Nwoya fire, 28 January 2016 Nwoya

Out · last detection 15 Feb 2016, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 28 January 2016 in Nwoya, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,951 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 2 in Uganda in 2016, of 269.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nwoya · 2026Nwoya · 2021Nwoya · 2021Kibanda · 2016

Burnt area
10,951ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
28 Jan 2016 – 14 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
28 Jan
2016
Heat detections
326
in a single hotspot: 144 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
296MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jan14 Feb
15 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jan 2016 · 608 MW · 33 29 Jan 2016 · 62 MW · 11 30 Jan 2016 · 35 MW · 8 31 Jan 2016 · 17 MW · 2 1 Feb 2016 · 1,740 MW · 32 2 Feb 2016 · 11 MW · 2 3 Feb 2016 · 203 MW · 23 4 Feb 2016 · 687 MW · 42 5 Feb 2016 · 753 MW · 57 6 Feb 2016 · 17 MW · 10 7 Feb 2016 · 7 MW · 2 8 Feb 2016 · 273 MW · 10 10 Feb 2016 · 12 MW · 2 11 Feb 2016 · 34 MW · 12 12 Feb 2016 · 34 MW · 16 13 Feb 2016 · 640 MW · 27 14 Feb 2016 · 176 MW · 16 15 Feb 2016 · 16 MW · 2
28 Jan 31 Jan 1 Feb 3 Feb 6 Feb 10 Feb 13 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
38km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 21 Feb.

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 6.9% of the area of London (110 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. Nwoya where it started
    11,024 ha reached on 22 Jan
    2.6 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
22 Jan 32.3 °C 39 % 23 km/h 1.9 mm Low 7
23 Jan 33.8 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Jan 32.1 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
25 Jan 33.1 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 Jan 32.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Jan 31.5 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Jan 31.4 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Jan 32.1 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jan 32.6 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Jan 34.5 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 Feb 34.8 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Feb 34.9 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Feb 34.9 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Feb 36.7 °C 18 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Feb 37.4 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Feb 37.6 °C 14 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Feb 37.6 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Feb 36.3 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Feb 36.2 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Feb 36.3 °C 10 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Feb 36.0 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Feb 36.6 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Feb 36.6 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Feb 37.7 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Feb after 36.1 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Feb after 36.7 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Feb after 37.9 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Feb after 34.8 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Feb after 38.4 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
20 Feb after 34.8 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Feb after 34.0 °C 36 % 33 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jan 2016
After · 21 Feb 2016

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 · 326Every 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 Uganda ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nwoya fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 January 2016 and 14 February 2016: 18 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 10,951 hectares (109.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nwoya (11,024 ha, 2.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (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.

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 999 · 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 326 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.

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 (Public Domain). 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.