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Nwoya fire, 21 December 2016 Nwoya

Out · last detection 30 Dec 2016, 11:24 UTC

The fire started on 21 December 2016 in Nwoya, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,615 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 19th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 5 in Uganda in 2016, of 269.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kibanda · 2017Kibanda · 2016Nwoya · 2016Nwoya · 2026

Burnt area
6,615ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
21 Dec 2016 – 30 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
21 Dec
2016
Heat detections
193
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
151MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Dec30 Dec
30 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

21 Dec 2016 · 5 MW · 2 22 Dec 2016 · 13 MW · 2 23 Dec 2016 · 10 MW · 6 24 Dec 2016 · 455 MW · 39 25 Dec 2016 · 256 MW · 39 26 Dec 2016 · 45 MW · 10 27 Dec 2016 · 602 MW · 55 28 Dec 2016 · 51 MW · 9 29 Dec 2016 · 17 MW · 4 30 Dec 2016 · 57 MW · 7
21 Dec 23 Dec 25 Dec 27 Dec 29 Dec

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
57km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 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 4.2% of the area of London (66 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
    6,659 ha reached on 15 Dec
    1.6 %

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 area0.50 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.50 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
21 Dec 33.6 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Dec 34.8 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Dec 35.2 °C 16 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Dec 35.7 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Dec 35.3 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Dec 35.8 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Dec 35.6 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Dec 35.4 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Dec 34.9 °C 17 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Dec 34.3 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Dec after 33.8 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Jan after 35.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Jan after 34.8 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Jan after 34.8 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Jan after 35.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jan after 36.6 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Jan after 36.7 °C 6 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Jan after 37.1 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Jan after 35.9 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Jan after 35.5 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Dec 2016
After · 6 Jan 2017

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 · 193Every 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 21 December 2016 and 30 December 2016: 10 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 6,615 hectares (66.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nwoya (6,659 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 193 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.