How long did the Sene West fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 December 2016 to 19 January 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 January 2017 to 12 January 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,786 hectares (27.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sene West (2,803 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

GH · Ghana · 2016-12-28 → 2017-01-19

Sene West fire, December 2016 Sene West

Out · last detection 19 Jan 2017, 13:32 UTC

The fire started on 28 December 2016 in Sene West, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,786 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 105th largest in Bono East since 2016 (of 193 with a page). Number 63 in Ghana in 2016, of 135.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sene West · 2016 Sene West · 2025 Sene West · 2018 Sekyere Afram Plains North · 2022

Burnt area: 2,786ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 28 Dec 2016 – 19 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 28 Dec; 2016
Heat detections: 99; in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 75MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Dec19 Jan

Play back 19 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

31 Dec 6 Jan 7 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 13 Jan 15 Jan 19 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

37°high

30km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.5 mm on 22 Jan.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 111 ha in 2016.

111 ha Sene West fire, January 2016 2,830 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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

Sene West where it started

2,803 ha reached on 31 Dec

0.8 %

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.

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)
4 Jan	34.8 °C	20 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Jan	36.4 °C	24 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
6 Jan	35.9 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Jan	36.4 °C	34 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Jan	35.1 °C	34 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Jan	35.8 °C	29 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Jan	35.2 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Jan	36.6 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Jan	34.7 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Jan	34.7 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
14 Jan	34.3 °C	13 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Jan	35.0 °C	12 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Jan	35.4 °C	28 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Jan	35.7 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Jan	37.1 °C	30 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
19 Jan	36.0 °C	42 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Jan after	37.1 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Jan after	37.6 °C	35 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Jan after	36.9 °C	35 %	37 km/h	9.5 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Dec 2016

After · 26 Jan 2017

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 · 99Every 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 Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sene West fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 December 2016 to 19 January 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 January 2017 to 12 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,786 hectares (27.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sene West (2,803 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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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?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 January 2017 to 12 January 2017. 99 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