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Cuilo fire, June 2026 Cuilo

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2026, 12:40 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2026 in Cuilo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,412 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 23th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 59 in Angola in 2026, of 486.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cuilo · 2016Cuilo · 2026Cuilo · 2016Lucapa · 2016

Burnt area
18,412ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
30 Jun 2026 – 10 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Jun
2026
Heat detections
240
in a single hotspot: 195 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
923MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun10 Jul
10 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 2026 · 18 MW · 5 1 Jul 2026 · 192 MW · 3 3 Jul 2026 · 2,017 MW · 39 4 Jul 2026 · 3,069 MW · 72 6 Jul 2026 · 44 MW · 9 7 Jul 2026 · 1,569 MW · 38 8 Jul 2026 · 920 MW · 42 9 Jul 2026 · 50 MW · 7 10 Jul 2026 · 428 MW · 25
30 Jun 3 Jul 4 Jul 6 Jul 8 Jul 10 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
39km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,511 ha in 2016, 1,404 ha in 2017, 131 ha in 2018, 2,761 ha in 2019, 2,145 ha in 2020, 4,369 ha in 2021, 2,232 ha in 2022, 3,674 ha in 2023, 4,700 ha in 2024, 5,130 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,622 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (184 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. Cuilo where it started
    18,542 ha reached on 30 Jun
    1.8 %

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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
30 Jun 30.6 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Jul 30.9 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Jul 30.5 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Jul 31.1 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Jul 31.4 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jul 30.7 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Jul 30.5 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Jul 29.9 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jul 29.2 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Jul 29.9 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Jul 30.2 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul after 30.2 °C 21 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jul after 31.1 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Jul after 31.4 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Jul after 31.6 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Jul after 30.6 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Jul after 29.2 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul after 28.4 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul after 29.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Jul after 29.3 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Jul after 28.7 °C 29 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jun 2026
After · 17 Jul 2026

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 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM1093 µg/m³
Optical depth1.01
1234567891011
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 · 240Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cuilo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 June 2026 to 10 July 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 July 2026 to 8 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,412 hectares (184.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cuilo (18,542 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 July 2026 → 10 July 2026.
  2. Start date: 3 July 2026 → 30 June 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 July 2026 to 8 July 2026. 240 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.

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.