Chekwii fire, September 2026 Chekwii
The fire started on 5 September 2026 in Chekwii, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,103 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1105th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 208 in Uganda in 2026, of 270.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,103ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 5 Sept 2026 – 5 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 5 Sept
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 15
- in a single hotspot: 118 MW
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 670MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
5 Sept 2026 · 670 MW · 15
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 12 Sept.
This area had burned before
71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 764 ha in 2016, 154 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 786 ha that had burned before.
- 682 ha Chekwii fire, November 2016 1,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 99 ha Chekwii fire, February 2020 1,098 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 82 ha Chekwii fire, October 2016 1,240 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 55 ha Chekwii fire, November 2020 1,319 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Chekwii where it started1,111 ha reached on 5 Sept0.5 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Sept | 36.8 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 6 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Sept after | 36.0 °C | 18 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 8 Sept after | 36.2 °C | 19 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 9 Sept after | 34.0 °C | 26 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 10 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 25 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 38 |
| 11 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 24 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 12 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 33 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 6 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 15Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,725 haChekwii4 November 2025 · 27 days · 14 km away
- 6,871 haChekwiiJanuary 2026 · 9 days · 30 km away
- 3,871 haBulambuliJanuary 2026 · 14 days · 34 km away
- 3,232 haPian9 November 2025 · 8 days · 34 km away
- 3,845 haPian11 November 2025 · 8 days · 37 km away
- 3,946 haPian18 August 2026 · 25 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chekwii fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2026 and 5 September 2026: 1 day 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 1,103 hectares (11.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Chekwii (1,111 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (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.
Emergency number: 999 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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.
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. 15 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.