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Yalinga fire, 24 December 2022 Yalinga

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2023, 23:38 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2022 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 36 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 108,015 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 16th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 3 in Central African Republic in 2022, of 97.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2020Yalinga · 2020Yalinga · 2018Yalinga · 2018

Burnt area
108,015ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
36days
24 Dec 2022 – 28 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
24 Dec
2022
Heat detections
5,844
in a single hotspot: 179 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec28 Jan
28 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

24 Dec 2022 · 207 MW · 30 25 Dec 2022 · 924 MW · 52 26 Dec 2022 · 837 MW · 186 27 Dec 2022 · 239 MW · 58 28 Dec 2022 · 316 MW · 86 29 Dec 2022 · 575 MW · 78 30 Dec 2022 · 2,929 MW · 385 31 Dec 2022 · 1,042 MW · 170 1 Jan 2023 · 302 MW · 136 2 Jan 2023 · 559 MW · 113 3 Jan 2023 · 900 MW · 173 4 Jan 2023 · 2,652 MW · 359 5 Jan 2023 · 3,568 MW · 435 6 Jan 2023 · 3,116 MW · 768 7 Jan 2023 · 5,338 MW · 572 8 Jan 2023 · 2,220 MW · 269 9 Jan 2023 · 1,913 MW · 232 10 Jan 2023 · 877 MW · 183 11 Jan 2023 · 638 MW · 185 12 Jan 2023 · 156 MW · 68 13 Jan 2023 · 580 MW · 113 14 Jan 2023 · 898 MW · 132 15 Jan 2023 · 1,362 MW · 234 16 Jan 2023 · 389 MW · 101 17 Jan 2023 · 619 MW · 215 18 Jan 2023 · 584 MW · 112 19 Jan 2023 · 431 MW · 82 20 Jan 2023 · 601 MW · 62 21 Jan 2023 · 178 MW · 73 22 Jan 2023 · 274 MW · 81 23 Jan 2023 · 138 MW · 27 24 Jan 2023 · 43 MW · 6 25 Jan 2023 · 299 MW · 25 26 Jan 2023 · 308 MW · 36 27 Jan 2023 · 24 MW · 5 28 Jan 2023 · 9 MW · 2
24 Dec 30 Dec 5 Jan 7 Jan 11 Jan 17 Jan 23 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

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 46,225 ha in 2016, 48,878 ha in 2017, 68,338 ha in 2018, 4,970 ha in 2019, 137,646 ha in 2020, 7,501 ha in 2021, 16,137 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 106,335 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

20 km
It burned the equivalent of 68% of the area of London (1,080 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
    108,701 ha reached on 24 Dec
    2.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
26 Dec 32.0 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Dec 31.1 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Dec 31.7 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Dec 32.8 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Dec 33.1 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Dec 33.6 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Jan 33.9 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Jan 34.1 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Jan 34.0 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jan 33.8 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Jan 34.0 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Jan 34.1 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan 34.2 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jan 34.2 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Jan 34.8 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Jan 33.9 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Jan 33.9 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Jan 33.7 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jan 34.0 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jan 34.3 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Jan 34.0 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Jan 34.6 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Jan 34.8 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Jan 34.9 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Jan 35.5 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Jan 36.2 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Jan 36.6 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Jan 36.3 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Jan 35.5 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Jan 36.6 °C 8 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Jan 35.7 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Jan 36.0 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Jan 37.3 °C 8 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Jan 36.7 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Jan after 37.0 °C 8 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
30 Jan after 36.8 °C 8 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Jan after 36.7 °C 9 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Dec 2022
After · 4 Feb 2023

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 8 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 210 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 71: 4.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak210 µg/m³
Days over the guideline33 days
PM10301 µg/m³
Optical depth1.26
2223242526272829303112345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031
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 · 5,844Every 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 Central African Republic ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yalinga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 December 2022 to 28 January 2023 (36 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 December 2022 to 21 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 108,015 hectares (1,080.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (108,701 ha, 2.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 42 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 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

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 December 2022 to 21 January 2023. 5,844 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 2020, 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 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.