Solhan fire, October 2026 Sebba, Solhan
The fire started on 27 October 2026 in Solhan, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,389 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 28th largest in Liptako since 2016 (of 229 with a page). Number 24 in Burkina Faso in 2026, of 246.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Sebba · 2025Sebba · 2023Sebba · 2023Sebba · 2025
- Burnt area
- 5,389ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 27 Oct 2026 – 29 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 27 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 50
- in a single hotspot: 38 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 129MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,804 ha in 2023, 4,729 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,852 ha that had burned before.
- 4,729 ha Sebba fire, November 2025 7,829 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,803 ha Sebba fire, November 2023 3,779 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Sebba fire, November 2023 1,502 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
3,532 ha reached on 28 Oct3.1 %
-
Solhan where it started1,889 ha reached on 27 Oct2.2 %
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Oct | 36.9 °C | 26 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 28 Oct | 36.6 °C | 27 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Oct | 36.5 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Oct after | 38.3 °C | 17 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 31 Oct after | 36.3 °C | 22 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 25 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 50Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,829 haSebba1 November 2025 · 4 days · 1 km away
- 3,779 haSebba5 November 2023 · 7 days · 3 km away
- 3,176 haSebba10 November 2025 · 3 days · 11 km away
- 2,604 haSolhan10 November 2023 · 3 days · 12 km away
- 1,741 haSebba20 November 2024 · 3 days · 12 km away
- 5,461 haSebba14 November 2023 · 8 days · 14 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Solhan fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 October 2026 and 29 October 2026: 3 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 5,389 hectares (53.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sebba (3,532 ha, 3.1 %); Solhan (1,889 ha, 2.2 %).
- Is the Solhan fire still active?
- No fire detections since 29 Oct 2026, 13:27 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 29 October 2026.
- Area: 1,659 → 5,389 ha.
- Page published (1,659 ha).
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 50 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO)). 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.