Burned area
satellite only2,737ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 2 Aug 2019 – 9 Aug 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
MW · Malawi · –
Chitipa fire, 2 August 2019 Rumphi, Chitipa
Out · last detection 9 Aug 2019, 12:10 UTC
The fire started on 2 August 2019 in Chitipa, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,737 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 55th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 319 with a page). Number 12 in Malawi in 2019, of 60.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-15matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only8days
2 Aug 2019 to 9 Aug 2019: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 9 Aug 2019, 12:10 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only2 Aug 2019
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 2 Aug 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only68
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 53 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 2 Aug 2019 – 9 Aug 2019
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only925MW
Total radiative power on 2 August 2019; hotspots that day: 53.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Aug 2019
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model10.3FWI · low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 48.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 2 Aug 2019, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model23.1°C · 29% RH
High of 23.1 °C and minimum humidity of 29% on 8 August 2019; gusts of 52 km/h on 2 August 2019.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 2 Aug 2019 – 9 Aug 2019
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logName: Rumphi → Chitipa.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 3 August 2019 → 9 August 2019.
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/chitipa-2019-08?v=2026-11-15A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire chitipa-2019-08.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-08-02 | 53 | 925 | 18.8 | 10.7 | 55 | 17.9 | 52.2 | 1.1 | 10.3 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-08-03 | 10 | 91 | 20.9 | 10.2 | 38 | 13.9 | 42.5 | 0 | 15.3 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-08-04 | 0 | 0 | 22.3 | 10.3 | 33 | 11.6 | 37.1 | 0 | 18.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-08-05 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 10 | 34 | 12.4 | 38.9 | 0 | 19.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-08-06 | 2 | 5 | 22.6 | 8.9 | 29 | 9.1 | 30.6 | 0 | 19.9 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-08-07 | 0 | 0 | 22.8 | 8.7 | 26 | 9.5 | 30.6 | 0 | 21.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-08-08 | 1 | 5 | 23.1 | 10.1 | 29 | 9.2 | 30.6 | 0 | 22 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-08-09 | 2 | 32 | 22.5 | 9.6 | 28 | 9.7 | 29.9 | 0 | 22.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-08-10 | 0 | 0 | 19.8 | 9 | 32 | 17.3 | 52.2 | 0 | 27.6 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-11 | 0 | 0 | 19.5 | 7.2 | 31 | 12.5 | 38.5 | 0 | 24.7 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-12 | 0 | 0 | 20.9 | 7.6 | 21 | 10.5 | 34.9 | 0 | 25.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-13 | 0 | 0 | 20.6 | 7.6 | 31 | 12.1 | 38.2 | 0 | 25.8 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-14 | 0 | 0 | 18.8 | 7.1 | 35 | 16.6 | 49.3 | 0 | 26.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-15 | 0 | 0 | 18.6 | 8.3 | 34 | 20.2 | 56.5 | 0 | 29.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-16 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 7.4 | 33 | 16.6 | 47.2 | 0 | 26.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-17 | 0 | 0 | 20.7 | 7.2 | 29 | 10.2 | 35.6 | 0 | 23.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-18 | 0 | 0 | 20.2 | 7.1 | 26 | 10.2 | 33.8 | 0 | 23.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-08-19 | 0 | 0 | 19.9 | 6.8 | 27 | 10.1 | 33.5 | 0 | 23.7 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 2,737ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 2 Aug 2019 – 9 Aug 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 2 Aug
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 68
- in a single hotspot: 53 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 212MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
2 Aug9 Aug
9 Aug 2019
How it evolved, day by day
2 Aug
3 Aug
6 Aug
8 Aug
9 Aug
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
23°high
52km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity
It had gone 48 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 223 ha in 2016, 2,761 ha in 2017, 62 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,522 ha that had burned before.
- 1,987 ha Chitipa fire, October 2017 4,007 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 740 ha Chitipa fire, June 2017 2,425 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 62 ha Chitipa fire, August 2018 1,207 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 34 ha Chitipa fire, August 2017 2,199 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
-
1,387 ha0.3 %
-
Chitipa where it started1,298 ha0.3 %
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)
Started with Strong wind: 13 % of the area in Malawi
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug | 18.8 °C | 55 % | 52 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 10 |
| 3 Aug | 20.9 °C | 38 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 4 Aug | 22.3 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 5 Aug | 22.0 °C | 34 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 6 Aug | 22.6 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 7 Aug | 22.8 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 8 Aug | 23.1 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 9 Aug | 22.5 °C | 28 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 10 Aug after | 19.8 °C | 32 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 Aug after | 19.5 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 12 Aug after | 20.9 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 13 Aug after | 20.6 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Aug after | 18.8 °C | 35 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 15 Aug after | 18.6 °C | 34 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 16 Aug after | 18.0 °C | 33 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 17 Aug after | 20.7 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 18 Aug after | 20.2 °C | 26 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Aug after | 19.9 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 10.3, a minimum humidity of 55% and 48 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 8.
FWI at the start
10.3
Minimum humidity
55 %
Days without rain
48
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Chitipa fire, 2 August 2019
2,737 ha
8 days
FWI 10.3
Min. humidity 55 %
Rumphi fire, July 2016
1,389 ha
3 days
FWI 15.0
Min. humidity 48 %
17 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Nkhata Bay fire, October 2018
1,585 ha
10 days
FWI 11.5
Min. humidity 56 %
135 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.6 mm on 20 Oct.
Nkhata Bay fire, November 2020
2,760 ha
19 days
FWI 9.0
Min. humidity 55 %
139 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 22 Nov.
Nkhata Bay fire, October 2018
1,231 ha
12 days
FWI 12.4
Min. humidity 56 %
138 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 16.9 mm on 21 Oct.
Nkhata Bay fire, October 2020
1,329 ha
8 days
FWI 7.5
Min. humidity 55 %
137 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 10.6 mm on 1 Nov.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
52km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 9 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 26 Jul 2019
After · 16 Aug 2019
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 68Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,693 haChitipa28 July 2016 · 9 days · 15 km away
- 5,896 haRumphi8 September 2017 · 11 days · 18 km away
- 11,218 haRumphi3 August 2019 · 7 days · 19 km away
- 7,686 haMafinga12 October 2017 · 18 days · 23 km away
- 11,134 haMafinga4 October 2017 · 19 days · 26 km away
- 15,016 haMafingaSeptember 2025 · 38 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chitipa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 August 2019 to 9 August 2019 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 August 2019 to 3 August 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,737 hectares (27.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rumphi (1,387 ha, 0.3 %); Chitipa (1,298 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 23.1 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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.
- Name: Rumphi → Chitipa.
- Last day with fire: 3 August 2019 → 9 August 2019.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 August 2019 to 3 August 2019. 68 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.