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ET · Ethiopia · –

Quara fire, 4 November 2026 Metema, Quara, Chilga

Burning · last detection 14 Nov 2026, 11:46 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 4 November 2026 in Quara, Ethiopia. It has been active for 10 days, with 183 heat detections and an area with fire of about 2,226 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 14 Nov 2026, 11:46 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Area with fire
≈ 2,226ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
4 Nov 2026 – 13 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
4 Nov
2026
Heat detections
183
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
64
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov13 Nov
14 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

4 Nov 2026 · 425 MW · 61 5 Nov 2026 · 238 MW · 25 6 Nov 2026 · 47 MW · 9 7 Nov 2026 · 48 MW · 9 8 Nov 2026 · 9 MW · 4 9 Nov 2026 · 33 MW · 6 10 Nov 2026 · 116 MW · 19 11 Nov 2026 · 154 MW · 29 12 Nov 2026 · 8 MW · 7 13 Nov 2026 · 147 MW · 18 14 Nov 2026 · 94 MW · 9
4 Nov 7 Nov 10 Nov 13 Nov

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

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (38 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

39°high
33km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.8 mm on 14 Nov.

What happened to each town

  1. 1,092 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.3 %
  2. Quara where it started
    686 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.1 %
  3. 448 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.1 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Started with Very dry air: 26 % of the area in Ethiopia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
4 Nov 38.4 °C 6 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
5 Nov 37.9 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
6 Nov 38.2 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Nov 39.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
8 Nov 37.6 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
9 Nov 36.8 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 51
10 Nov 35.8 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Nov 35.7 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 48
12 Nov 36.9 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Nov 36.4 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 47
14 Nov after 36.0 °C 29 % 36 km/h 11.8 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2026
After · 13 Nov 2026

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 8 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1066 µg/m³
Optical depth0.35
2 Nov5 Nov8 Nov11 Nov
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 · 183Every 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 Ethiopia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Quara fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 4 November 2026 to 13 November 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 2,226 hectares with fire (22.3 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Metema (1,092 ha, 0.3 %); Quara (686 ha, 0.1 %); Chilga (448 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Quara fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 14 Nov 2026, 11:46 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ethiopia (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.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 14 November 2026.
  1. Page published (≈ 2,226 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

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How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 2,226 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 183 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.