Burned area
satellite only2,927ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 12 May 2025 – 15 May 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
GN · Guinea · –
Wendou Mbour fire, 12 May 2025 Wendou Mbour
Out · last detection 15 May 2025, 14:12 UTC
The fire started on 12 May 2025 in Wendou Mbour, Guinea, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,927 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 62th largest in Boké since 2016 (of 195 with a page). Number 18 in Guinea in 2025, of 53.
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 only4days
12 May 2025 to 15 May 2025: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 15 May 2025, 14:12 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 only12 May 2025
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 12 May 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only107
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 337 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 12 May 2025 – 15 May 2025
+− 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 only2,966MW
Total radiative power on 12 May 2025; hotspots that day: 86.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 12 May 2025
+− 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
model22.7FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 3.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 12 May 2025, 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
model37.0°C · 45% RH
High of 37.0 °C and minimum humidity of 45% on 12 May 2025; gusts of 34 km/h on 14 May 2025.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 12 May 2025 – 15 May 2025
- 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≈ 200people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 0.48 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 GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
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
- 2,927 ha
- Dates
- 12 May 2025 – 15 May 2025
- Name
- Wendou Mbour
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/wendou-mbour-2025-05?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 wendou-mbour-2025-05.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-05-12 | 86 | 2,966 | 37 | 25.1 | 45 | 15.4 | 32.4 | 0 | 22.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-05-13 | 0 | 0 | 36.5 | 25.1 | 42 | 13.1 | 25.6 | 0 | 22.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-05-14 | 12 | 130 | 37 | 24.6 | 41 | 16.1 | 33.5 | 0 | 24.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-05-15 | 9 | 366 | 37 | 25.6 | 46 | 13.8 | 31.7 | 0.4 | 24.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-05-16 | 0 | 0 | 35.3 | 25 | 50 | 13 | 34.9 | 0.2 | 22.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-05-17 | 0 | 0 | 36.9 | 24.6 | 32 | 13.6 | 29.9 | 0 | 27.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-05-18 | 0 | 0 | 35.2 | 24.4 | 43 | 13.9 | 27 | 0 | 27 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-05-19 | 0 | 0 | 37.9 | 23 | 31 | 15.3 | 31.7 | 0 | 31.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-05-20 | 0 | 0 | 36.6 | 24.2 | 45 | 13.4 | 23.8 | 0.7 | 22.7 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-05-21 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 24.7 | 39 | 19.2 | 40.7 | 0 | 30.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-05-22 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 25.2 | 43 | 16.4 | 38.5 | 0.4 | 28.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-05-23 | 0 | 0 | 33.8 | 26 | 57 | 11.9 | 26.3 | 1.6 | 11.3 | moderado | 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
- 2,927ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 12 May 2025 – 15 May 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- sub-prefectures
- Started on
- 12 May
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 107
- in a single hotspot: 337 MW
- Danger at start
- 23
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.2GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
12 May15 May
15 May 2025
How it evolved, day by day
12 May
14 May
15 May
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
37°high
34km/h · peak gust
41%lowest humidity
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 23 May.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,716 ha in 2016, 670 ha in 2017, 502 ha in 2018, 1,477 ha in 2019, 790 ha in 2020, 704 ha in 2022, 99 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,857 ha that had burned before.
- 1,713 ha Wendou Mbour fire, April 2016 18,136 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,154 ha Wendou Mbour fire, May 2019 2,072 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 790 ha Wendou Mbour fire, May 2020 7,510 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 316 ha Wendou Mbour fire, April 2017 5,541 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
-
Wendou Mbour where it started2,944 ha reached on 12 May2.0 %
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 area0.48 ha
Residents≈ 200
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.48 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 May | 37.0 °C | 45 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 13 May | 36.5 °C | 42 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 14 May | 37.0 °C | 41 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 15 May | 37.0 °C | 46 % | 32 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 24 |
| 16 May after | 35.3 °C | 50 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 22 |
| 17 May after | 36.9 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 May after | 35.2 °C | 43 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 19 May after | 37.9 °C | 31 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 20 May after | 36.6 °C | 45 % | 24 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 23 |
| 21 May after | 37.0 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 22 May after | 36.1 °C | 43 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 29 |
| 23 May after | 33.8 °C | 57 % | 26 km/h | 1.6 mm | Moderate 11 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 22.7, a minimum humidity of 45% and 3 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 32.
FWI at the start
22.7
Minimum humidity
45 %
Days without rain
3
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Wendou Mbour fire, 12 May 2025
2,927 ha
4 days
FWI 22.7
Min. humidity 45 %
Wendou Mbour fire, May 2019
2,418 ha
6 days
FWI 24.8
Min. humidity 44 %
8 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.8 mm on 7 May.
Baguinet fire, April 2016
2,186 ha
6 days
FWI 23.2
Min. humidity 44 %
100 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Daramagnaky fire, April 2016
2,559 ha
15 days
FWI 25.4
Min. humidity 44 %
66 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.0 mm on 14 May.
Lisso fire, May 2023
2,046 ha
8 days
FWI 19.5
Min. humidity 45 %
107 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 6.4 mm on 18 May.
Kolia fire, May 2022
2,147 ha
8 days
FWI 24.2
Min. humidity 47 %
116 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 20 May.
What happened to them
- 9 days
- median duration
- 2,538 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 2.2 mm
- rain at the end (median; 23 of 32 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (2,927 ha against a median of 2,538 ha) and lasted 4 days, against 9 days.
In 9 of 32, 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 2.2 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
1.6 mmfirst rain
23 May8 days after it ended
34km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 15 May, and on 23 May 1.6 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 23 of 32, with a median of 2.2 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 · 5 May 2025
After · 22 May 2025
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 12 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 185 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 95: 6.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak185 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10235 µg/m³
Optical depth2.51
WHO 15
10 May12 May14 May16 May18 May
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 · 107Every 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
- 18,136 haWendou Mbour27 April 2016 · 14 days · 4 km away
- 18,407 haMissira13 April 2017 · 25 days · 15 km away
- 7,990 haSangarédi22 April 2018 · 26 days · 17 km away
- 12,928 haKoumbia19 April 2018 · 22 days · 30 km away
- 7,869 haKoumbia28 April 2016 · 11 days · 30 km away
- 8,818 haMissira21 April 2021 · 15 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wendou Mbour fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 May 2025 and 15 May 2025: 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 2,927 hectares (29.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Wendou Mbour (2,944 ha, 2.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guinea (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: 32. Their median duration was 9 days and their median area 2,538 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 9 of 32, 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 2.2 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. 107 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 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.