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The goal is to predict the final extent of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, 2014–2015, well before its end. Our models are based on the nature of the reported data, and the social, medical, and technological conditions that existed in real time during the course of the epidemic. The spatial and temporal nature of Ebola transmission is considered. A modified, classical compartmental model is used to develop variations of Gompertz and logistic‐type predictive models. A map analysis strongly hints at the existence of an initial rural component of the transmission of the disease followed by an urban component. Cumulative and weekly data for the three countries illustrate how the disease intensified and spread over the 90 weeks of the epidemic. A spatial autocorrelation study shows the clustering locational changes of the disease over time. A cross‐correlation study gives credence to both a rural and an urban transmission pattern. Our early estimates of the toll of the disease, crude as they are, stand in marked contrast to some of the official estimates at the time, which greatly inflated the number of new cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]