Burned area
satellite only1,904ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 22 Apr 2023 – 29 Apr 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
SL · Sierra Leone · –
Tonko Limba fire, 22 April 2023 Tonko Limba, Masungbala
Out · last detection 29 Apr 2023, 14:18 UTC
The fire started on 22 April 2023 in Tonko Limba, Sierra Leone, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,904 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 199th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 937 with a page). Number 37 in Sierra Leone in 2023, of 160.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-27matches 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 only8days
22 Apr 2023 to 29 Apr 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 29 Apr 2023, 14:18 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 only22 Apr 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 22 Apr 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only39
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 94 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 22 Apr 2023 – 29 Apr 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 only478MW
Total radiative power on 27 April 2023; hotspots that day: 6.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 27 Apr 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
model30.6FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 0.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 22 Apr 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
model38.3°C · 31% RH
High of 38.3 °C and minimum humidity of 31% on 22 April 2023; gusts of 37 km/h on 28 April 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 22 Apr 2023 – 29 Apr 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.
Living inside
model≈ 2,400people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 4.6 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
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
-
logLast day with fire: 24 April 2023 → 29 April 2023.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 27 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
- 1,904 ha
- Dates
- 22 Apr 2023 – 29 Apr 2023
- Name
- Tonko Limba
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/tonko-limba-2023-04-3?v=2026-10-27A 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 tonko-limba-2023-04-3.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-04-22 | 23 | 229 | 38.3 | 23.5 | 31 | 15.2 | 33.8 | 0 | 30.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-04-23 | 4 | 187 | 36.7 | 24 | 36 | 14.5 | 35.6 | 0.2 | 30.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-04-24 | 4 | 41 | 35.7 | 24.5 | 54 | 14.9 | 33.1 | 1.9 | 13.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-04-25 | 0 | 0 | 34.3 | 25 | 55 | 15.7 | 34.6 | 1.2 | 14.6 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-04-26 | 0 | 0 | 32.2 | 25.4 | 61 | 17.1 | 31 | 0.7 | 15.9 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-04-27 | 6 | 478 | 35.3 | 23.4 | 38 | 16.8 | 36 | 0 | 27.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-04-28 | 0 | 0 | 34.2 | 23.3 | 44 | 16.4 | 37.4 | 0 | 27.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-04-29 | 2 | 10 | 33.9 | 24.2 | 47 | 15.8 | 36 | 0.3 | 27.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-04-30 | 0 | 0 | 34.2 | 23.8 | 51 | 14.9 | 36 | 0.6 | 21.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-05-01 | 0 | 0 | 33.3 | 24 | 50 | 15.5 | 38.2 | 0.6 | 21.8 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-05-02 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 24.1 | 52 | 14.3 | 31 | 3.9 | 7.3 | bajo | 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
- 1,904ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 22 Apr 2023 – 29 Apr 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- chiefdoms
- Started on
- 22 Apr
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 39
- in a single hotspot: 94 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 189MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
22 Apr29 Apr
29 Apr 2023
How it evolved, day by day
22 Apr
23 Apr
24 Apr
27 Apr
29 Apr
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
37km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 2 May.
This area had burned before
2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 29 ha in 2017.
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
-
Tonko Limba where it started1,753 ha reached on 22 Apr2.0 %
-
163 ha reached on 22 Apr0.5 %
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 area4.6 ha
Residents≈ 2,400
Inside the perimeter there were about 4.6 hectares of built-up land and about 2,400 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Apr | 38.3 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 23 Apr | 36.7 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Apr | 35.7 °C | 54 % | 33 km/h | 1.9 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 25 Apr | 34.3 °C | 55 % | 35 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 26 Apr | 32.2 °C | 61 % | 31 km/h | 0.7 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 27 Apr | 35.3 °C | 38 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Apr | 34.2 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 29 Apr | 33.9 °C | 47 % | 36 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 27 |
| 30 Apr after | 34.2 °C | 51 % | 36 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 22 |
| 1 May after | 33.3 °C | 50 % | 38 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 22 |
| 2 May after | 34.0 °C | 52 % | 31 km/h | 3.9 mm | Low 7 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 30.6, a minimum humidity of 31% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 54.
FWI at the start
30.6
Minimum humidity
31 %
Days without rain
0
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Tonko Limba fire, 22 April 2023
1,904 ha
8 days
FWI 30.6
Min. humidity 31 %
Malal Mara fire, March 2025
1,043 ha
9 days
FWI 30.4
Min. humidity 32 %
70 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.0 mm on 8 Apr.
Gbendembu Ngowa fire, April 2024
1,144 ha
7 days
FWI 31.7
Min. humidity 31 %
56 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 9.2 mm on 8 May.
Sanda Magbolont fire, April 2024
1,486 ha
6 days
FWI 30.8
Min. humidity 32 %
13 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 3 May.
Samaya fire, April 2025
2,585 ha
4 days
FWI 31.0
Min. humidity 31 %
125 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 17 Apr.
Safroko Limba fire, April 2017
1,602 ha
17 days
FWI 30.4
Min. humidity 33 %
77 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 8.1 mm on 18 Apr.
What happened to them
- 9 days
- median duration
- 1,395 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 3.6 mm
- rain at the end (median; 52 of 54 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (1,904 ha against a median of 1,395 ha) and lasted 8 days, against 9 days.
In 2 of 54, 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 3.6 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
3.9 mmfirst rain
2 May3 days after it ended
37km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 29 Apr, and on 2 May 3.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 52 of 54, with a median of 3.6 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 · 15 Apr 2023
After · 6 May 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 24 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 153 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak153 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10233 µg/m³
Optical depth1.24
WHO 15
20 Apr22 Apr24 Apr26 Apr
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 · 39Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tonko Limba fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 April 2023 to 29 April 2023 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 April 2023 to 24 April 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,904 hectares (19.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tonko Limba (1,753 ha, 2.0 %); Masungbala (163 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sierra Leone (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: 54. Their median duration was 9 days and their median area 1,395 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 2 of 54, 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 3.6 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 24 April 2023 → 29 April 2023.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 April 2023 to 24 April 2023. 39 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (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.