Burned area
satellite only2,333ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 20 Nov 2023 – 22 Nov 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BJ · Benin · –
Tanguiéta fire, 20 November 2023 Tanguiéta
Out · last detection 22 Nov 2023, 01:49 UTC
The fire started on 20 November 2023 in Tanguiéta, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,333 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 156th largest in Atakora since 2016 (of 420 with a page). Number 23 in Benin in 2023, of 100.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only3days
20 Nov 2023 to 22 Nov 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 22 Nov 2023, 01:49 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only20 Nov 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Nov 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only77
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 189 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Nov 2023 – 22 Nov 2023
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only959MW
Total radiative power on 20 November 2023; hotspots that day: 54.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 20 Nov 2023
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model46.1FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 33.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Nov 2023, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.2°C · 18% RH
High of 38.2 °C and minimum humidity of 18% on 21 November 2023; gusts of 35 km/h on 20 November 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Nov 2023 – 22 Nov 2023
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 2,333 ha
- Dates
- 20 Nov 2023 – 22 Nov 2023
- Name
- Tanguiéta
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/tanguieta-2023-11-4?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire tanguieta-2023-11-4.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-11-20 | 54 | 959 | 38 | 21.5 | 16 | 15.2 | 35.3 | 0 | 46.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2023-11-21 | 20 | 609 | 38.2 | 21.8 | 18 | 11.7 | 27.7 | 0 | 43.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2023-11-22 | 3 | 7 | 36.8 | 22.9 | 22 | 9.9 | 22.3 | 0 | 40.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2023-11-23 | 0 | 0 | 37.3 | 23.6 | 35 | 12.1 | 30.2 | 0 | 35.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-11-24 | 0 | 0 | 36.2 | 26 | 40 | 14.9 | 32.8 | 0.1 | 33.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-11-25 | 0 | 0 | 35.4 | 25.7 | 40 | 11.9 | 30.2 | 0.1 | 31 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-11-26 | 0 | 0 | 34.3 | 26.2 | 37 | 11.4 | 27.7 | 0.1 | 30.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-11-27 | 0 | 0 | 35.9 | 25 | 36 | 8.3 | 26.6 | 0 | 28.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-11-28 | 0 | 0 | 38.8 | 24 | 20 | 11.2 | 27.7 | 0 | 39.4 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-11-29 | 0 | 0 | 36.5 | 24.6 | 33 | 11.3 | 27 | 0 | 36.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-11-30 | 0 | 0 | 38.8 | 25 | 22 | 13.5 | 28.8 | 0 | 40.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-01 | 0 | 0 | 38.5 | 23.3 | 14 | 16.7 | 36 | 0 | 50.9 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-12-02 | 0 | 0 | 38.4 | 22.2 | 14 | 15.5 | 35.6 | 0 | 50 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 2,333ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 20 Nov 2023 – 22 Nov 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 20 Nov
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 77
- in a single hotspot: 189 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 525MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Nov22 Nov
22 Nov 2023
How it evolved, day by day
20 Nov
21 Nov
22 Nov
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
38°high
35km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity
It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 448 ha in 2016, 1,393 ha in 2017, 20 ha in 2018, 669 ha in 2019, 764 ha in 2020, 7 ha in 2021, 742 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,193 ha that had burned before.
- 1,143 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2017 3,753 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 764 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2020 3,523 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 742 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2022 8,489 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 568 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2019 2,218 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 448 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2016 2,562 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 250 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2017 2,073 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 101 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2019 36,910 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 20 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2018 6,251 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
-
Tanguiéta where it started2,348 ha reached on 20 Nov0.4 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Nov | 38.0 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Nov | 38.2 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Nov | 36.8 °C | 22 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 23 Nov after | 37.3 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 24 Nov after | 36.2 °C | 40 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 25 Nov after | 35.4 °C | 40 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 26 Nov after | 34.3 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Nov after | 35.9 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 28 Nov after | 38.8 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 29 Nov after | 36.5 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Nov after | 38.8 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Dec after | 38.5 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Dec after | 38.4 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 46.1, a minimum humidity of 16% and 33 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 57.
FWI at the start
46.1
Minimum humidity
16 %
Days without rain
33
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Tanguiéta fire, 20 November 2023
2,333 ha
3 days
FWI 46.1
Min. humidity 16 %
Tanguiéta fire, December 2019
1,549 ha
4 days
FWI 45.9
Min. humidity 16 %
10 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Tanguiéta fire, November 2021
1,204 ha
1 day
FWI 47.2
Min. humidity 16 %
21 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Tanguiéta fire, November 2024
56,864 ha
28 days
FWI 46.2
Min. humidity 15 %
18 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Tanguiéta fire, December 2019
2,061 ha
4 days
FWI 44.8
Min. humidity 16 %
22 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Tanguiéta fire, December 2021
3,164 ha
3 days
FWI 46.4
Min. humidity 15 %
29 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 5 days
- median duration
- 1,706 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 1.0 mm
- rain at the end (median; 1 of 57 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (2,333 ha against a median of 1,706 ha) and lasted 3 days, against 5 days.
In 56 of 57, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.0 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
35km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 22 Nov, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 1 of 57, with a median of 1.0 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Nov 2023
After · 29 Nov 2023
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 23 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10210 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
WHO 15
18 Nov20 Nov22 Nov24 Nov
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 · 77Every 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
- 36,910 haTanguiéta23 November 2019 · 20 days · 16 km away
- 56,864 haTanguiéta24 November 2024 · 28 days · 18 km away
- 34,314 haTanguiéta13 December 2020 · 19 days · 21 km away
- 42,440 haTanguiéta22 November 2022 · 36 days · 29 km away
- 76,309 haTanguiéta5 January 2022 · 48 days · 30 km away
- 49,627 haTanguiéta24 November 2019 · 36 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tanguiéta fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 November 2023 and 22 November 2023: 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 2,333 hectares (23.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tanguiéta (2,348 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Benin (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 57. Their median duration was 5 days and their median area 1,706 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 56 of 57, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.0 mm.
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 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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 77 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 (Public Domain). 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.