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Yalinga fire, 16 January 2025 Yalinga

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2025, 23:31 UTC

The fire started on 16 January 2025 in Yalinga, Central African Republic, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,365 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 252th largest in Haute-Kotto since 2016 (of 372 with a page). Number 111 in Central African Republic in 2025, of 145.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yalinga · 2022Yalinga · 2022Yalinga · 2020Yalinga · 2020

Burnt area
6,365ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
16 Jan 2025 – 29 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit
1
sub-prefectures
Started on
16 Jan
2025
Heat detections
307
in a single hotspot: 126 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
209MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jan29 Jan
28 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jan 2025 · 111 MW · 19 19 Jan 2025 · 3 MW · 1 22 Jan 2025 · 105 MW · 31 23 Jan 2025 · 83 MW · 23 24 Jan 2025 · 239 MW · 52 25 Jan 2025 · 416 MW · 56 26 Jan 2025 · 250 MW · 38 27 Jan 2025 · 357 MW · 63 28 Jan 2025 · 316 MW · 24
16 Jan 22 Jan 24 Jan 25 Jan 26 Jan 28 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
43km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,420 ha in 2016, 4,203 ha in 2017, 4,227 ha in 2018, 1,041 ha in 2019, 9,050 ha in 2020, 10,293 ha in 2022, 2,537 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,376 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (64 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
    6,406 ha reached on 16 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
16 Jan 36.8 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Jan 36.9 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Jan 37.8 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Jan 36.3 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Jan 35.7 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Jan 35.8 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Jan 36.5 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Jan 36.0 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Jan 35.1 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Jan 34.9 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Jan 35.2 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
27 Jan 34.9 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
28 Jan 35.0 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Jan 33.6 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
30 Jan after 34.4 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
31 Jan after 34.9 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
1 Feb after 35.9 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Feb after 36.9 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
3 Feb after 37.2 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
4 Feb after 37.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Feb after 37.9 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Feb after 36.7 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Feb after 37.6 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
8 Feb after 35.4 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jan 2025
After · 5 Feb 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 19 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 73 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 51: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak73 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10149 µg/m³
Optical depth0.83
1415161718192021222324252627282930311
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 · 307Every 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 16 January 2025 to 29 January 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 January 2025 to 29 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,365 hectares (63.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yalinga (6,406 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 23 January 2025 to 29 January 2025. 307 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.