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Tureta fire, 22 November 2025 Tureta

Out · last detection 26 Nov 2025, 13:18 UTC

The fire started on 22 November 2025 in Tureta, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,966 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Sokoto since 2016 (of 47 with a page). Number 149 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.4 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…
Burnt area
2,966ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
22 Nov 2025 – 26 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
22 Nov
2025
Heat detections
35
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
84MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Nov26 Nov
26 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

22 Nov 2025 · 10 MW · 1 23 Nov 2025 · 104 MW · 11 24 Nov 2025 · 219 MW · 22 26 Nov 2025 · 3 MW · 1
22 Nov 23 Nov 24 Nov 26 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

36°high
32km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 234 ha in 2018, 8 ha in 2020, 56 ha in 2021, 437 ha in 2023, 1,035 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,284 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
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

  1. Tureta where it started
    2,983 ha reached on 22 Nov
    1.6 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-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)
22 Nov 35.8 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Nov 35.5 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Nov 35.9 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Nov 35.5 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Nov 36.1 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Nov after 37.2 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Nov after 37.5 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Nov after 37.6 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Nov after 35.7 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Dec after 34.6 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Dec after 33.7 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Dec after 36.2 °C 22 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Dec after 34.4 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Dec after 35.7 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Nov 2025
After · 3 Dec 2025

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 25 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 135 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 107: 7.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak135 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10939 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
202122232425262728
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 · 35Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tureta fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 November 2025 to 26 November 2025 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 November 2025 to 25 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,966 hectares (29.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tureta (2,983 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.
  1. Last day with fire: 25 November 2025 → 26 November 2025.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 November 2025 to 25 November 2025. 35 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.

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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (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.