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Yalinga fire, 8 February 2016 Yalinga

Out · last detection 25 Feb 2016, 23:57 UTC

The fire started on 8 February 2016 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,259 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 125th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 60 in Central African Republic in 2016, of 165.

Compare with…
Burnt area
11,259ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
8 Feb 2016 – 25 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
8 Feb
2016
Heat detections
397
in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
164MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Feb25 Feb
25 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

8 Feb 2016 · 37 MW · 6 9 Feb 2016 · 198 MW · 11 10 Feb 2016 · 1 MW · 1 11 Feb 2016 · 126 MW · 27 12 Feb 2016 · 243 MW · 29 13 Feb 2016 · 327 MW · 49 14 Feb 2016 · 211 MW · 37 15 Feb 2016 · 99 MW · 30 16 Feb 2016 · 46 MW · 15 17 Feb 2016 · 190 MW · 20 18 Feb 2016 · 726 MW · 40 19 Feb 2016 · 256 MW · 32 20 Feb 2016 · 251 MW · 59 21 Feb 2016 · 43 MW · 10 22 Feb 2016 · 72 MW · 11 23 Feb 2016 · 69 MW · 12 24 Feb 2016 · 7 MW · 3 25 Feb 2016 · 44 MW · 5
8 Feb 11 Feb 14 Feb 17 Feb 18 Feb 20 Feb 23 Feb

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
38km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.7 mm on 4 Mar.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (113 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. Yalinga where it started
    11,316 ha reached on 8 Feb
    0.3 %

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
8 Feb 35.2 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Feb 36.3 °C 9 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Feb 36.5 °C 8 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Feb 35.6 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
12 Feb 35.6 °C 7 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Feb 37.0 °C 8 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
14 Feb 37.3 °C 7 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Feb 38.3 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Feb 38.2 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Feb 38.7 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Feb 38.1 °C 14 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Feb 39.4 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Feb 39.1 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Feb 38.7 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Feb 37.9 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Feb 38.3 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
24 Feb 36.4 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Feb 39.2 °C 9 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Feb after 39.5 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Feb after 38.7 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Feb after 38.7 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Feb after 41.0 °C 7 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
1 Mar after 38.9 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Mar after 37.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Mar after 37.5 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Mar after 36.0 °C 36 % 36 km/h 6.7 mm Moderate 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Feb 2016
After · 3 Mar 2016

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 · 397Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yalinga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 February 2016 to 25 February 2016 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 February 2016 to 23 February 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,259 hectares (112.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (11,316 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Central African Republic (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.

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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 8 February 2016 to 23 February 2016. 397 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.