How long did the Cuangar fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2025 and 12 September 2025: 17 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 7,834 hectares (78.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cuangar (7,881 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

AO · Angola · 2025-08-27 → 2025-09-12

Cuangar fire, August 2025 Cuangar

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2025, 12:55 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2025 in Cuangar, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,834 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 302th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 658 with a page). Number 80 in Angola in 2025, of 191.

Burnt area: 7,834ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 27 Aug 2025 – 12 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 27 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 199; in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 2.3GW; sum of detected power

Play back 13 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug12 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

27282930311234567891213

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

55km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 770 ha in 2016, 1,146 ha in 2017, 2,044 ha in 2018, 814 ha in 2019, 301 ha in 2020, 3,672 ha in 2021, 250 ha in 2022, 3,536 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,308 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Cuangar where it started

7,881 ha reached on 27 Aug

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)
27 Aug	28.5 °C	24 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Aug	32.1 °C	15 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Aug	33.8 °C	14 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Aug	34.7 °C	8 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
31 Aug	33.7 °C	9 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
1 Sept	33.7 °C	9 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
2 Sept	34.0 °C	7 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
3 Sept	32.3 °C	8 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
4 Sept	32.6 °C	8 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
5 Sept	33.0 °C	9 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
6 Sept	33.8 °C	5 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
7 Sept	33.5 °C	10 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
8 Sept	33.6 °C	10 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
9 Sept	33.7 °C	10 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
10 Sept	34.9 °C	10 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
11 Sept	34.8 °C	10 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
12 Sept	35.7 °C	9 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 70
13 Sept after	36.1 °C	8 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
14 Sept after	35.5 °C	14 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
15 Sept after	35.4 °C	12 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
16 Sept after	36.1 °C	8 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
17 Sept after	36.3 °C	10 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
18 Sept after	37.6 °C	8 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
19 Sept after	37.4 °C	9 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
20 Sept after	37.3 °C	6 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 80
21 Sept after	35.4 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
22 Sept after	29.3 °C	35 %	24 km/h	1.4 mm	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Aug 2025

After · 19 Sept 2025

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 9 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³

Days over the guideline20 days

PM1062 µg/m³

Optical depth1.00

WHO 15

25262728293031123456789101112131415

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 199Every 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

All fires in Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cuangar fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2025 and 12 September 2025: 17 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 7,834 hectares (78.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cuangar (7,881 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 (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.

Where it burned