How long did the Rafi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 January 2020 and 27 January 2020: 5 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 3,577 hectares (35.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Rafi (3,598 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

NG · Nigeria · 2020-01-23 → 2020-01-27

Rafi fire, 23 January 2020 Rafi

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2020, 13:31 UTC

The fire started on 23 January 2020 in Rafi, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,577 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 119th largest in Niger since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 34 in Nigeria in 2020, of 150.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rafi · 2021 Shiroro · 2025 Rafi · 2025 Rafi · 2024

Burnt area: 3,577ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 23 Jan 2020 – 27 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 23 Jan; 2020
Heat detections: 118; in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 114MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jan27 Jan

Play back 28 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jan 24 Jan 25 Jan 26 Jan 27 Jan 28 Jan

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

50km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 178 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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

Rafi where it started

3,598 ha reached on 23 Jan

0.9 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
23 Jan	33.8 °C	15 %	45 km/h	Extreme 53
24 Jan	33.4 °C	11 %	50 km/h	Extreme 59
25 Jan	33.1 °C	12 %	48 km/h	Extreme 59
26 Jan	33.0 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 55
27 Jan	34.0 °C	16 %	37 km/h	Extreme 53
28 Jan after	34.4 °C	16 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
29 Jan after	34.5 °C	13 %	38 km/h	Extreme 54
30 Jan after	35.0 °C	10 %	44 km/h	Extreme 60
31 Jan after	35.0 °C	11 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
1 Feb after	33.4 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 60
2 Feb after	34.1 °C	12 %	40 km/h	Extreme 58
3 Feb after	33.8 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
4 Feb after	33.4 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
5 Feb after	33.8 °C	15 %	43 km/h	Extreme 60
6 Feb after	33.9 °C	17 %	40 km/h	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jan 2020

After · 3 Feb 2020

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.

Detections table · 118Every 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 Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Rafi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 January 2020 and 27 January 2020: 5 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 3,577 hectares (35.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Rafi (3,598 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (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: 112

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 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. 118 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.

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.

Where it burned