Chipili fire, 8 August 2025 Chipili
The fire started on 8 August 2025 in Chipili, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,921 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 173th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 56 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,921ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 8 Aug 2025 – 19 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 313
- in a single hotspot: 75 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 180MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,766 ha in 2016, 6,168 ha in 2017, 3,164 ha in 2018, 5,205 ha in 2019, 3,459 ha in 2020, 3,362 ha in 2021, 4,059 ha in 2022, 1,406 ha in 2023, 3,311 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,944 ha that had burned before.
- 5,205 ha Chipili fire, August 2019 81,932 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,575 ha Chipili fire, August 2017 21,338 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,589 ha Chipili fire, August 2016 31,556 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,459 ha Chipili fire, August 2020 26,924 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,342 ha Chipili fire, August 2022 19,915 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,926 ha Chipili fire, August 2021 8,641 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,767 ha Chipili fire, July 2024 21,299 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,487 ha Chipili fire, August 2018 28,846 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 started7,970 ha reached on 8 Aug1.9 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Aug | 27.1 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Aug | 27.5 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Aug | 27.1 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 11 Aug | 26.5 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Aug | 25.6 °C | 27 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 13 Aug | 25.6 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Aug | 26.8 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Aug | 28.1 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 16 Aug | 27.6 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Aug | 27.9 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Aug | 26.3 °C | 21 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 19 Aug | 26.1 °C | 23 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 20 Aug after | 26.6 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 21 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Aug after | 28.0 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 23 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 22 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Aug after | 28.6 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 25 Aug after | 31.3 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 19 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 28 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 29 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 18 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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 20 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 69 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily 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 · 313Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 36,195 haChipili26 July 2024 · 21 days · 13 km away
- 81,932 haChipili9 August 2019 · 33 days · 14 km away
- 156,557 haLupososhi25 July 2026 · 65 days · 15 km away
- 110,204 haChipili9 August 2025 · 32 days · 16 km away
- 296,161 haMansa15 August 2025 · 37 days · 34 km away
- 76,625 haChipili18 August 2016 · 22 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chipili fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2025 and 19 August 2025: 12 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 7,921 hectares (79.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Chipili (7,970 ha, 1.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
- 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.
Report an error
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. 313 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.