How long did the Pian fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 November 2025 to 1 December 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 November 2025 to 24 November 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,746 hectares (27.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pian (1,886 ha, 1.0 %); Bokora (879 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.

UG · Uganda · 2025-11-07 → 2025-12-01

Pian fire, 7 November 2025 Pian, Bokora

Out · last detection 29 Nov 2025, 10:37 UTC

The fire started on 7 November 2025 in Pian, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,746 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 145th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1378 with a page). Number 33 in Uganda in 2025, of 226.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pian · 2021 Pian · 2022 Pian · 2020 Pian · 2025

Burnt area: 2,746ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 7 Nov 2025 – 1 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 7 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 93; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 51MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Nov1 Dec

Play back 29 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

7 Nov 13 Nov 16 Nov 22 Nov 25 Nov 29 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

53km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 286 ha in 2020, 832 ha in 2021, 623 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,320 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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

Pian where it started

1,886 ha reached on 7 Nov

1.0 %
Bokora

879 ha reached on 8 Nov

0.2 %

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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
9 Nov	30.7 °C	36 %	44 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 12
10 Nov	31.8 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
11 Nov	33.2 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
12 Nov	33.7 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Nov	32.6 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Nov	32.3 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
15 Nov	33.2 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Nov	34.1 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 Nov	32.2 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Nov	31.7 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
19 Nov	32.4 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
20 Nov	32.7 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Nov	32.7 °C	23 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Nov	32.9 °C	17 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Nov	32.5 °C	23 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Nov	33.9 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Nov	33.6 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
26 Nov	33.6 °C	21 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Nov	32.5 °C	24 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
28 Nov	33.9 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
29 Nov	34.0 °C	22 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Nov	32.9 °C	20 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
1 Dec	33.4 °C	15 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
2 Dec after	34.0 °C	14 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
3 Dec after	34.0 °C	19 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
4 Dec after	33.7 °C	22 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Oct 2025

After · 8 Dec 2025

Before After

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 17 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1030 µg/m³

Optical depth0.29

WHO 15

789101112131415161718192021222324252627

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 · 93Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Uganda ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pian fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 November 2025 to 1 December 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 November 2025 to 24 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,746 hectares (27.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pian (1,886 ha, 1.0 %); Bokora (879 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 24 November 2025 → 1 December 2025.
27 October 2026 Start date: 9 November 2025 → 7 November 2025.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 November 2025 to 24 November 2025. 93 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 (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.

Where it burned