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Chibombo fire, October 2025 Chibombo, Ngabwe

Out · last detection 5 Nov 2025, 11:23 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2025 in Chibombo, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,407 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 36th largest in Central since 2016 (of 401 with a page). Number 30 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ngabwe · 2025Ngabwe · 2025Chibombo · 2020Chibombo · 2019

Burnt area
14,407ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
13 Oct 2025 – 5 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
13 Oct
2025
Heat detections
571
in a single hotspot: 213 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
462MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

5 Nov 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct5 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 2025 · 377 MW · 15 14 Oct 2025 · 58 MW · 7 15 Oct 2025 · 2,350 MW · 35 16 Oct 2025 · 28 MW · 2 17 Oct 2025 · 280 MW · 31 18 Oct 2025 · 1,029 MW · 34 19 Oct 2025 · 968 MW · 52 20 Oct 2025 · 695 MW · 41 21 Oct 2025 · 198 MW · 24 22 Oct 2025 · 298 MW · 36 24 Oct 2025 · 1 MW · 1 25 Oct 2025 · 85 MW · 6 26 Oct 2025 · 178 MW · 17 27 Oct 2025 · 26 MW · 5 28 Oct 2025 · 156 MW · 16 29 Oct 2025 · 76 MW · 17 30 Oct 2025 · 157 MW · 10 31 Oct 2025 · 304 MW · 8 1 Nov 2025 · 457 MW · 13 2 Nov 2025 · 550 MW · 46 3 Nov 2025 · 1,191 MW · 58 4 Nov 2025 · 916 MW · 53 5 Nov 2025 · 252 MW · 7
13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 21 Oct 26 Oct 30 Oct 3 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

37°high
61km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 6 Nov.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 811 ha in 2020, 2,304 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.1% of the area of London (144 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. Chibombo where it started
    12,876 ha reached on 6 Oct
    1.6 %
  2. Ngabwe
    1,601 ha reached on 8 Oct
    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)
13 Oct 35.3 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Oct 34.5 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 59
15 Oct 34.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Oct 35.1 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Oct 35.2 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
18 Oct 33.8 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
19 Oct 34.7 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct 33.7 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Oct 33.2 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Oct 31.1 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Oct 26.7 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct 31.8 °C 27 % 36 km/h 2.0 mm High 23
25 Oct 33.5 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
26 Oct 35.1 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
27 Oct 33.6 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Oct 36.0 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Oct 35.1 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Oct 35.2 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Oct 34.4 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Nov 35.9 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Nov 37.1 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Nov 35.9 °C 20 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
4 Nov 33.2 °C 33 % 55 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 52
5 Nov 35.2 °C 21 % 43 km/h 1.1 mm Very high 45
6 Nov after 26.2 °C 45 % 42 km/h 4.3 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2025
After · 12 Nov 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 26 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM1042 µg/m³
Optical depth0.86
11121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678
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 · 571Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chibombo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 October 2025 and 5 November 2025: 24 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 14,407 hectares (144.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chibombo (12,876 ha, 1.6 %); Ngabwe (1,601 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 571 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.