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Calai fire, 22 August 2022 Calai

Out · last detection 6 Sept 2022, 12:34 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2022 in Calai, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,879 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 381th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 63 in Angola in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Calai · 2017Calai · 2025Calai · 2026Calai · 2024

Burnt area
6,879ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
22 Aug 2022 – 6 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Aug
2022
Heat detections
247
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
201MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug6 Sept
6 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

24 Aug 2022 · 340 MW · 6 26 Aug 2022 · 220 MW · 23 27 Aug 2022 · 259 MW · 36 28 Aug 2022 · 410 MW · 23 29 Aug 2022 · 380 MW · 46 30 Aug 2022 · 343 MW · 41 31 Aug 2022 · 126 MW · 33 1 Sept 2022 · 98 MW · 18 3 Sept 2022 · 12 MW · 2 4 Sept 2022 · 45 MW · 6 5 Sept 2022 · 125 MW · 9 6 Sept 2022 · 54 MW · 4
24 Aug 27 Aug 28 Aug 29 Aug 31 Aug 3 Sept 5 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
47km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,952 ha in 2016, 2,413 ha in 2017, 1,257 ha in 2018, 12 ha in 2019, 481 ha in 2020, 19 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,408 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (69 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. Calai where it started
    6,915 ha reached on 24 Aug
    0.9 %

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 Aug 30.3 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Aug 31.2 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Aug 32.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Aug 32.7 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Aug 32.4 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Aug 31.5 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Sept 29.8 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Sept 29.2 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Sept 28.9 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Sept 31.1 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Sept 33.1 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 34.7 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
7 Sept after 34.5 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Sept after 33.5 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
9 Sept after 33.1 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Sept after 32.6 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
11 Sept after 33.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2022
After · 13 Sept 2022

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 27 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 101 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak101 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10144 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
202122232425262728293031123456789
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 · 247Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Calai fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2022 to 6 September 2022 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 August 2022 to 1 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,879 hectares (68.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Calai (6,915 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 September 2022 → 6 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 26 August 2022 → 22 August 2022.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 August 2022 to 1 September 2022. 247 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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.