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Chobe fire, 3 September 2017 Chobe

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2017, 22:48 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2017 in Chobe, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 46,164 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in Chobe since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 5 in Botswana in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chobe · 2016Chobe · 2020Chobe · 2018Chobe · 2020

Burnt area
46,164ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
3 Sept 2017 – 26 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
subdistricts
Started on
3 Sept
2017
Heat detections
1,613
in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
705MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept26 Sept
27 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2017 · 100 MW · 26 4 Sept 2017 · 455 MW · 62 5 Sept 2017 · 283 MW · 39 6 Sept 2017 · 435 MW · 33 7 Sept 2017 · 287 MW · 40 8 Sept 2017 · 350 MW · 85 9 Sept 2017 · 407 MW · 39 10 Sept 2017 · 74 MW · 10 11 Sept 2017 · 124 MW · 12 12 Sept 2017 · 84 MW · 15 13 Sept 2017 · 426 MW · 33 14 Sept 2017 · 722 MW · 112 15 Sept 2017 · 1,591 MW · 179 16 Sept 2017 · 3,375 MW · 220 17 Sept 2017 · 1,684 MW · 80 18 Sept 2017 · 2,711 MW · 274 19 Sept 2017 · 1,025 MW · 122 20 Sept 2017 · 2,661 MW · 108 21 Sept 2017 · 240 MW · 30 22 Sept 2017 · 66 MW · 8 23 Sept 2017 · 91 MW · 11 24 Sept 2017 · 58 MW · 20 25 Sept 2017 · 110 MW · 16 26 Sept 2017 · 217 MW · 18 27 Sept 2017 · 39 MW · 6
3 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 23 Sept 27 Sept

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
49km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 221 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 29% of the area of London (462 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Chobe where it started
    46,480 ha reached on 2 Sept
    2.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
3 Sept 28.7 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 27.8 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Sept 27.8 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Sept 30.6 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept 32.2 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Sept 33.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Sept 33.9 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept 33.6 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Sept 33.3 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
12 Sept 32.9 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Sept 33.2 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Sept 34.9 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Sept 34.5 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Sept 34.5 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
17 Sept 35.2 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Sept 36.2 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
19 Sept 34.8 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Sept 35.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Sept 33.5 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Sept 33.6 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept 35.3 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Sept 34.5 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Sept 35.2 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Sept 35.9 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Sept after 36.6 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Sept after 34.6 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
29 Sept after 31.4 °C 23 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Sept after 31.8 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47
1 Oct after 32.7 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Oct after 32.9 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Oct after 35.0 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Oct after 35.8 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Oct after 34.5 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Oct after 30.1 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2017
After · 3 Oct 2017

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 · 1,613Every 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 Botswana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chobe fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2017 and 26 September 2017: 24 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 46,164 hectares (461.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chobe (46,480 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Botswana (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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,613 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 (Public Domain). 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.