How long did the Pian fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 November 2025 to 24 November 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 November 2025 to 18 November 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,845 hectares (38.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pian (3,230 ha, 1.8 %); Chekwii (639 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 · 2025-11-05 → 2025-11-24

Pian fire, 5 November 2025 Pian, Chekwii

Out · last detection 24 Nov 2025, 10:31 UTC

The fire started on 5 November 2025 in Pian, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,845 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 68th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 18 in Uganda in 2025, of 226.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pian · 2024 Chekwii · 2020 Pian · 2018 Pian · 2026

Burnt area: 3,845ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 5 Nov 2025 – 24 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 5 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 77; in a single hotspot: 111 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 78MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Nov24 Nov

Play back 24 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

5 Nov 8 Nov 13 Nov 19 Nov 22 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

36°high

42km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8 ha in 2018, 678 ha in 2020, 830 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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

3,230 ha reached on 5 Nov

1.8 %
Chekwii

639 ha reached on 11 Nov

0.3 %

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)
11 Nov	35.0 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
12 Nov	35.5 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
13 Nov	35.0 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Nov	34.4 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Nov	34.7 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
16 Nov	35.6 °C	16 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Nov	33.9 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Nov	33.9 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Nov	34.4 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Nov	34.8 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
21 Nov	34.6 °C	20 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
22 Nov	34.8 °C	15 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
23 Nov	34.2 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Nov	35.7 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Nov after	35.4 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
26 Nov after	35.7 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Nov after	34.2 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
28 Nov after	35.9 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Oct 2025

After · 1 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 16 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1027 µg/m³

Optical depth0.38

WHO 15

9101112131415161718192021

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 · 77Every 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 5 November 2025 to 24 November 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 November 2025 to 18 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,845 hectares (38.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pian (3,230 ha, 1.8 %); Chekwii (639 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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: 18 November 2025 → 24 November 2025.
27 October 2026 Start date: 11 November 2025 → 5 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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 November 2025 to 18 November 2025. 77 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