Burned area
satellite only1,350ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 27 Nov 2023 – 29 Nov 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ZW · Zimbabwe · –
Bulilima fire, November 2023 Plumtree, Bulilima
Out · last detection 29 Nov 2023, 12:14 UTC
The fire started on 27 November 2023 in Bulilima, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,350 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 93th largest in Matabeleland South since 2016 (of 156 with a page). Number 78 in Zimbabwe in 2023, of 173.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-15matches 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 only3days
27 Nov 2023 to 29 Nov 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 29 Nov 2023, 12:14 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 only27 Nov 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 27 Nov 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only52
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 56 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 27 Nov 2023 – 29 Nov 2023
+− 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 only573MW
Total radiative power on 28 November 2023; hotspots that day: 40.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 28 Nov 2023
+− 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
model66.9FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 5.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 27 Nov 2023, 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
model34.5°C · 16% RH
High of 34.5 °C and minimum humidity of 16% on 27 November 2023; gusts of 44 km/h on 29 November 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 27 Nov 2023 – 29 Nov 2023
- 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.
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
-
logName: Plumtree → Bulilima.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 15 November 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
- 1,350 ha
- Dates
- 27 Nov 2023 – 29 Nov 2023
- Name
- Bulilima
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/bulilima-2023-11?v=2026-11-15A 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 bulilima-2023-11.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-11-27 | 6 | 24 | 34.5 | 20.7 | 16 | 18.9 | 40.3 | 0 | 66.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-11-28 | 40 | 573 | 34.5 | 18.8 | 16 | 16.7 | 32 | 0 | 54.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-11-29 | 6 | 113 | 34.3 | 19.5 | 21 | 20.8 | 43.6 | 1.8 | 62.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-11-30 | 0 | 0 | 25.7 | 16.3 | 44 | 27.2 | 54.4 | 0.2 | 23.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-01 | 0 | 0 | 28.8 | 15.7 | 26 | 22 | 45 | 0 | 34.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-02 | 0 | 0 | 31.9 | 13.4 | 12 | 18.3 | 33.1 | 0 | 44.3 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-03 | 0 | 0 | 32.3 | 14.3 | 12 | 19.9 | 36 | 0 | 50.8 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-12-04 | 0 | 0 | 34.6 | 14.9 | 11 | 20.4 | 38.2 | 0 | 42.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-05 | 0 | 0 | 35.7 | 16.8 | 13 | 24.6 | 45.4 | 0 | 45.6 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-06 | 0 | 0 | 34.3 | 21.5 | 22 | 29.3 | 54 | 0 | 61 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-12-07 | 0 | 0 | 32.2 | 18.9 | 29 | 25.6 | 48.2 | 0 | 49.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-08 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 18.9 | 27 | 19.1 | 33.8 | 0 | 42.6 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-12-09 | 0 | 0 | 34.5 | 21 | 24 | 15.6 | 40.7 | 1.1 | 39.6 | muy_alto | 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). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,350ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 27 Nov 2023 – 29 Nov 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Nov
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 52
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 67
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 237MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
27 Nov29 Nov
29 Nov 2023
How it evolved, day by day
27 Nov
28 Nov
29 Nov
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
34°high
44km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity
It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 9 Dec.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2022.
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
-
1,326 ha7.6 %
-
Bulilima where it started31 ha0.0 %
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.
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)
Started with Extreme FWI: 54 % of the area in Zimbabwe
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Nov | 34.5 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 28 Nov | 34.5 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 29 Nov | 34.3 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 1.8 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 30 Nov after | 25.7 °C | 44 % | 54 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 23 |
| 1 Dec after | 28.8 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 2 Dec after | 31.9 °C | 12 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 3 Dec after | 32.3 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 4 Dec after | 34.6 °C | 11 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Dec after | 35.7 °C | 13 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 6 Dec after | 34.3 °C | 22 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 7 Dec after | 32.2 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 8 Dec after | 33.0 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 9 Dec after | 34.5 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very high 40 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 66.9, a minimum humidity of 16% and 5 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 27.
FWI at the start
66.9
Minimum humidity
16 %
Days without rain
5
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Bulilima fire, November 2023
1,350 ha
3 days
FWI 66.9
Min. humidity 16 %
Insiza fire, October 2016
2,024 ha
3 days
FWI 65.3
Min. humidity 16 %
183 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 1 Nov.
Insiza fire, September 2019
2,290 ha
4 days
FWI 68.5
Min. humidity 15 %
182 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 24 Sept.
Insiza fire, October 2018
1,223 ha
3 days
FWI 64.4
Min. humidity 17 %
191 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 5.2 mm on 3 Nov.
Tutume fire, October 2021
12,021 ha
13 days
FWI 64.3
Min. humidity 17 %
237 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.1 mm on 25 Oct.
Hwange fire, November 2020
1,428 ha
2 days
FWI 62.7
Min. humidity 15 %
180 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.3 mm on 11 Nov.
What happened to them
- 4 days
- median duration
- 1,742 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 1.9 mm
- rain at the end (median; 19 of 27 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (1,350 ha against a median of 1,742 ha) and lasted 3 days, against 4 days.
In 8 of 27, 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 1.9 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
1.1 mmfirst rain
9 Dec10 days after it ended
44km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 29 Nov, and on 9 Dec 1.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 19 of 27, with a median of 1.9 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 · 20 Nov 2023
After · 6 Dec 2023
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 29 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.50
WHO 15
25 Nov27 Nov29 Nov1 Dec
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 · 52Every 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
- 3,074 haBulilima6 August 2022 · 5 days · 29 km away
- 23,600 haMatobo6 October 2022 · 13 days · 31 km away
- 3,155 haBulilima4 September 2018 · 2 days · 32 km away
- 5,636 haMangwe11 September 2022 · 9 days · 36 km away
- 3,823 haMangwe9 October 2018 · 4 days · 36 km away
- 4,532 haBulilima19 October 2026 · 3 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bulilima fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 November 2023 and 29 November 2023: 3 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 1,350 hectares (13.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Plumtree (1,326 ha, 7.6 %); Bulilima (31 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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: 27. Their median duration was 4 days and their median area 1,742 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 8 of 27, 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 1.9 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Name: Plumtree → Bulilima.
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. 52 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.
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 ADM2 (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.