How long did the Vélingara fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 January 2022 and 29 January 2022: 4 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 2,629 hectares (26.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Vélingara (2,640 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SN · Senegal · 2022-01-26 → 2022-01-29

Vélingara fire, January 2022 Vélingara

Out · last detection 29 Jan 2022, 14:50 UTC

The fire started on 26 January 2022 in Vélingara, Senegal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,629 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 55th largest in Matam since 2016 (of 95 with a page). Number 50 in Senegal in 2022, of 90.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vélingara · 2016 Sinthiou Banambe/Wouro Sidy · 2023 Sinthiou Banambe/Wouro Sidy · 2021 Sinthiou Banambe/Wouro Sidy · 2022

Burnt area: 2,629ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 26 Jan 2022 – 29 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 26 Jan; 2022
Heat detections: 61; in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 128MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 29 Jan 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jan29 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jan 27 Jan 28 Jan 29 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

38°high

38km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 598 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% 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

Vélingara where it started

2,640 ha reached on 26 Jan

0.2 %

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	Danger (FWI)
26 Jan	36.0 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
27 Jan	36.9 °C	13 %	29 km/h	Extreme 52
28 Jan	36.0 °C	18 %	31 km/h	Extreme 51
29 Jan	37.9 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Extreme 53
30 Jan after	38.8 °C	13 %	32 km/h	Extreme 52
31 Jan after	39.7 °C	10 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
1 Feb after	38.8 °C	10 %	46 km/h	Extreme 66
2 Feb after	37.0 °C	7 %	45 km/h	Extreme 66
3 Feb after	36.7 °C	12 %	39 km/h	Extreme 62
4 Feb after	37.1 °C	11 %	34 km/h	Extreme 58
5 Feb after	39.3 °C	12 %	30 km/h	Extreme 56
6 Feb after	39.0 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Extreme 55
7 Feb after	39.6 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Extreme 57
8 Feb after	38.7 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 63

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jan 2022

After · 5 Feb 2022

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 · 61Every 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 Senegal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Vélingara fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 January 2022 and 29 January 2022: 4 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 2,629 hectares (26.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Vélingara (2,640 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Senegal (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: 18

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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 18.

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. 61 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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