How long did the Surma fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2019 and 8 February 2019: 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 3,039 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Surma (3,060 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 47 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 Ethiopia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

ET · Ethiopia · 2019-02-04 → 2019-02-08

Surma fire, 4 February 2019 Surma

Out · last detection 8 Feb 2019, 10:46 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2019 in Surma, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,039 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 73th largest in SNNPR since 2016 (of 186 with a page). Number 108 in Ethiopia in 2019, of 220.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.2 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: Surma · 2017 Surma · 2016 Surma · 2026 Surma · 2026

Burnt area: 3,039ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 4 Feb 2019 – 8 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 4 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 73; in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 72MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb8 Feb

Play back 8 Feb 2019

How it evolved, day by day

4 Feb 5 Feb 6 Feb 8 Feb

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

47km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,141 ha in 2016, 1,604 ha in 2017, 365 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,301 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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

Surma where it started

3,060 ha reached on 28 Jan

0.6 %

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)
4 Feb	33.4 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 Feb	33.3 °C	21 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Feb	32.2 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Feb	33.7 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Feb	33.5 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Feb after	31.8 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Feb after	32.5 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Feb after	32.4 °C	24 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Feb after	32.7 °C	27 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
13 Feb after	32.3 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Feb after	30.7 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Feb after	31.0 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.6 mm	High 24
16 Feb after	32.4 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
17 Feb after	32.3 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Feb after	31.3 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jan 2019

After · 15 Feb 2019

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 · 73Every 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 Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Surma fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2019 and 8 February 2019: 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 3,039 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Surma (3,060 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 47 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 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

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.

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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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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. 73 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 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.

Where it burned