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Wase fire, 3 December 2025 Wase, Karim Lamido

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2025, 00:45 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2025 in Wase, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,595 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Plateau since 2016 (of 35 with a page). Number 5 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Karim Lamido · 2022Wase · 2023Karim Lamido · 2022Wase · 2025

Burnt area
34,595ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
3 Dec 2025 – 21 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
3 Dec
2025
Heat detections
824
in a single hotspot: 71 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
255MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec21 Dec
22 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2025 · 270 MW · 35 4 Dec 2025 · 344 MW · 59 5 Dec 2025 · 95 MW · 15 6 Dec 2025 · 571 MW · 48 7 Dec 2025 · 392 MW · 53 8 Dec 2025 · 923 MW · 80 9 Dec 2025 · 480 MW · 112 10 Dec 2025 · 100 MW · 25 11 Dec 2025 · 206 MW · 15 12 Dec 2025 · 71 MW · 15 13 Dec 2025 · 5 MW · 1 14 Dec 2025 · 87 MW · 20 15 Dec 2025 · 35 MW · 13 16 Dec 2025 · 282 MW · 60 17 Dec 2025 · 92 MW · 27 18 Dec 2025 · 63 MW · 11 19 Dec 2025 · 606 MW · 49 20 Dec 2025 · 414 MW · 71 21 Dec 2025 · 69 MW · 20 22 Dec 2025 · 1 MW · 1
3 Dec 6 Dec 8 Dec 9 Dec 12 Dec 15 Dec 18 Dec 21 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high
42km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,152 ha in 2016, 5,552 ha in 2022, 2,750 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,845 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 22% of the area of London (346 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. Wase where it started
    26,730 ha reached on 26 Nov
    5.4 %
  2. Karim Lamido
    8,089 ha reached on 4 Dec
    1.3 %

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)
3 Dec 37.9 °C 24 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Dec 37.6 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Dec 37.4 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Dec 37.5 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Dec 36.8 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Dec 35.9 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Dec 35.3 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Dec 34.9 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Dec 36.3 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Dec 36.5 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Dec 38.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Dec 39.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Dec 37.1 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Dec 35.1 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Dec 34.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
18 Dec 35.4 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Dec 36.7 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Dec 37.2 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Dec 37.5 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Dec after 36.3 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec after 38.1 °C 17 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Dec after 38.1 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Dec after 38.5 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Dec after 38.7 °C 17 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Dec after 38.7 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Dec after 39.1 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Dec after 39.1 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec after 38.6 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Dec after 38.5 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2025
After · 28 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 9 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 97 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 87: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak97 µg/m³
Days over the guideline24 days
PM10447 µg/m³
Optical depth0.72
123456789101112131415161718192021222324
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 · 824Every 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 Wase fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 December 2025 and 21 December 2025: 19 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 34,595 hectares (346.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Wase (26,730 ha, 5.4 %); Karim Lamido (8,089 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.
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 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.

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; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 824 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 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.