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Chitambo fire, 10 October 2022 Chitambo

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2022, 22:59 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2022 in Chitambo, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,316 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 208th largest in Central since 2016 (of 400 with a page). Number 128 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Burnt area
4,316ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
10 Oct 2022 – 20 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Oct
2022
Heat detections
171
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Oct 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct20 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

101112131415161718192021

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
43km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 334 ha in 2017, 1,018 ha in 2018, 427 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,131 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Chitambo where it started
    4,348 ha reached on 8 Oct
    0.4 %

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)
10 Oct 35.2 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Oct 35.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Oct 35.1 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Oct 35.7 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Oct 35.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Oct 35.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Oct 35.6 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Oct 36.2 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Oct 35.8 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct 35.9 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Oct 34.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Oct after 36.5 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Oct after 36.1 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Oct after 36.5 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Oct after 37.4 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Oct after 36.8 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Oct after 38.8 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Oct after 38.9 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Oct after 37.8 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Oct after 37.4 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Oct after 36.5 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Oct 2022
After · 27 Oct 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.

Detections table · 171Every 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 Chitambo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2022 and 20 October 2022: 11 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 4,316 hectares (43.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chitambo (4,348 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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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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.