How long did the Surma fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 December 2024 to 10 January 2025 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2025 to 9 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,612 hectares (26.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Surma (2,630 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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 · 2024-12-30 → 2025-01-10

Surma fire, December 2024 Surma

Out · last detection 9 Jan 2025, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 30 December 2024 in Surma, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,612 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 100th largest in SNNPR since 2016 (of 186 with a page). Number 49 in Ethiopia in 2024, of 91.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Surma · 2016 Surma · 2020 Pibor · 2026

Burnt area: 2,612ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 30 Dec 2024 – 10 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Dec; 2024
Heat detections: 57; in a single hotspot: 213 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 145MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Dec10 Jan

Play back 9 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

30 Dec 3 Jan 6 Jan 8 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

32°high

39km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 11 Jan.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,076 ha in 2016, 632 ha in 2018, 848 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,846 ha that had burned before.

905 ha Surma fire, November 2016 3,015 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (26 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

2,630 ha reached on 30 Dec

0.6 %

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)
5 Jan	29.9 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
6 Jan	30.3 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
7 Jan	31.7 °C	24 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
8 Jan	31.1 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
9 Jan	31.0 °C	30 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
10 Jan	30.5 °C	40 %	37 km/h	0.5 mm	High 23
11 Jan after	29.8 °C	43 %	36 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Dec 2024

After · 17 Jan 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 9 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 81 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak81 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM1084 µg/m³

Optical depth1.00

WHO 15

3456789101112

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 · 57Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 December 2024 to 10 January 2025 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2025 to 9 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,612 hectares (26.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Surma (2,630 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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 ↗

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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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 5 January 2025 to 9 January 2025. 57 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