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Rafi fire, 3 January 2025 Rafi

Out · last detection 10 Jan 2025, 00:27 UTC

The fire started on 3 January 2025 in Rafi, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,523 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 122th largest in Niger since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 112 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Burnt area
3,523ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
3 Jan 2025 – 9 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Jan
2025
Heat detections
131
in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
416MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Jan 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jan9 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

45678910

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
43km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,163 ha in 2020, 2,777 ha in 2021, 2,089 ha in 2023, 8 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,059 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Rafi where it started
    3,543 ha reached on 31 Dec
    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 Rain Danger (FWI)
3 Jan 36.9 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Jan 36.4 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Jan 35.2 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Jan 35.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Jan 34.6 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Jan 34.8 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Jan 33.5 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Jan after 33.6 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan after 33.7 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Jan after 33.1 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Jan after 35.1 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Jan after 34.9 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jan after 34.6 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jan after 36.5 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Jan after 37.6 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Jan after 37.7 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Jan after 35.7 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Dec 2024
After · 16 Jan 2025

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 11 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 179 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 112: 7.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak179 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10821 µg/m³
Optical depth1.18
123456789101112
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 · 131Every 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 Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Rafi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2025 and 9 January 2025: 7 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 3,523 hectares (35.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Rafi (3,543 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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

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 112.

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.