Chitipa fire, 19 October 2025 Chitipa, Karonga
The fire started on 19 October 2025 in Chitipa, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 8th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 426 with a page). Number 2 in Malawi in 2025, of 76.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 22,043ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 23days
- 19 Oct 2025 – 10 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 471
- in a single hotspot: 64 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 199MW
- 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 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 11 Nov.
This area had burned before
41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,524 ha in 2016, 376 ha in 2018, 1,284 ha in 2019, 744 ha in 2020, 2,965 ha in 2022, 1,029 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,020 ha that had burned before.
- 1,175 ha Chitipa fire, October 2016 1,803 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 745 ha Chitipa fire, October 2016 1,406 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 376 ha Chitipa fire, October 2018 1,419 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 187 ha Chitipa fire, October 2016 1,589 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
-
Chitipa where it started8,283 ha reached on 19 Oct1.9 %
-
1,397 ha reached on 19 Oct0.4 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 36 hectares of built-up land and about 3,800 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Oct | 31.4 °C | 30 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 20 Oct | 31.2 °C | 32 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 21 Oct | 31.8 °C | 36 % | 41 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Oct | 31.2 °C | 47 % | 46 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 29 |
| 23 Oct | 30.9 °C | 48 % | 41 km/h | 1.6 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 24 Oct | 32.1 °C | 41 % | 36 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 23 |
| 25 Oct | 32.4 °C | 33 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 26 Oct | 34.1 °C | 23 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 27 Oct | 33.7 °C | 34 % | 42 km/h | 3.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 28 Oct | 33.1 °C | 40 % | 49 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 29 Oct | 31.9 °C | 40 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 30 Oct | 32.4 °C | 32 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 31 Oct | 31.7 °C | 38 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 1 Nov | 32.9 °C | 25 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Nov | 32.8 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 3 Nov | 31.9 °C | 39 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 4 Nov | 31.0 °C | 47 % | 52 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 22 |
| 5 Nov | 32.1 °C | 39 % | 43 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 26 |
| 6 Nov | 33.1 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 26 |
| 7 Nov | 32.0 °C | 40 % | 44 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 24 |
| 8 Nov | 31.7 °C | 50 % | 42 km/h | 2.6 mm | Low 10 |
| 9 Nov | 29.4 °C | 52 % | 37 km/h | 3.5 mm | Low 6 |
| 10 Nov | 29.8 °C | 65 % | 39 km/h | 4.3 mm | Very low 3 |
| 11 Nov after | 29.6 °C | 57 % | 40 km/h | 2.7 mm | Very low 4 |
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 5 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 471Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 28,845 haKaronga 13 October 2026 · 14 days · 21 km away
- 8,073 haKaronga18 October 2025 · 31 days · 21 km away
- 6,319 haChitipa 13 October 2026 · 14 days · 26 km away
- 3,871 haChitipa 15 October 2026 · 12 days · 32 km away
- 10,386 haChitipa18 October 2025 · 25 days · 36 km away
- 3,935 haKaronga14 October 2017 · 14 days · 36 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 19 October 2025 to 10 November 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 October 2025 to 8 November 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 22,043 hectares (220.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chitipa (8,283 ha, 1.9 %); Karonga (1,397 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 October 2025 to 8 November 2025. 471 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.