Chipili fire, 27 August 2020 Chipili, Kawambwa
The fire started on 27 August 2020 in Chipili, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 28,968 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 42th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 9 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 28,968ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 27 Aug 2020 – 19 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 1,414
- in a single hotspot: 201 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 809MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 28 Sept.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17,129 ha in 2016, 15,878 ha in 2017, 10,881 ha in 2018, 16,027 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 27,382 ha that had burned before.
- 13,967 ha Chipili fire, August 2019 81,932 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,532 ha Kawambwa fire, August 2016 20,286 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,094 ha Chipili fire, August 2018 6,231 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,974 ha Kawambwa fire, August 2017 98,647 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,190 ha Chipili fire, August 2018 28,846 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,135 ha Chipili fire, September 2016 4,103 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,084 ha Kawambwa fire, August 2017 24,646 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,692 ha Chipili fire, August 2017 20,350 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
-
Chipili where it started27,689 ha reached on 27 Aug6.5 %
-
1,442 ha reached on 28 Aug0.2 %
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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Aug | 30.4 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 28 Aug | 31.1 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 29 Aug | 31.8 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Aug | 31.8 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 31 Aug | 33.1 °C | 20 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 1 Sept | 32.0 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Sept | 29.8 °C | 21 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 3 Sept | 29.4 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 4 Sept | 28.7 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 5 Sept | 28.7 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 6 Sept | 29.3 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 7 Sept | 28.9 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Sept | 29.2 °C | 17 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 9 Sept | 28.3 °C | 20 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 10 Sept | 28.6 °C | 23 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 11 Sept | 29.8 °C | 22 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 12 Sept | 29.1 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 13 Sept | 29.2 °C | 32 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Sept | 31.2 °C | 23 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Sept | 31.5 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 16 Sept | 31.5 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 17 Sept | 33.3 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 18 Sept | 32.9 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 19 Sept | 32.4 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 20 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 21 Sept after | 34.0 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Sept after | 33.4 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 23 Sept after | 31.3 °C | 22 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Sept after | 31.1 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 25 Sept after | 32.3 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 26 Sept after | 32.7 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Sept after | 34.4 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Sept after | 30.8 °C | 42 % | 32 km/h | 1.4 mm | High 22 |
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.
Detections table · 1,414Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chipili fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 August 2020 to 19 September 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2020 to 12 September 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 28,968 hectares (289.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chipili (27,689 ha, 6.5 %); Kawambwa (1,442 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 12 September 2020 → 19 September 2020.
- Start date: 1 September 2020 → 27 August 2020.
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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2020 to 12 September 2020. 1,414 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 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.