How long did the Cuvelai fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2020 to 13 October 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2020 to 7 October 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,860 hectares (98.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cuvelai (5,050 ha, 0.3 %); Cuanhama (4,849 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class 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 · 2020-09-23 → 2020-10-13

Cuvelai fire, 23 September 2020 Cuvelai, Cuanhama

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2020, 12:28 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2020 in Cuvelai, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,860 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 24th largest in Cunene since 2016 (of 104 with a page). Number 20 in Angola in 2020, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Menongue · 2022 Menongue · 2020 Cuanhama · 2024 Cuanhama · 2026

Burnt area: 9,860ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 23 Sept 2020 – 13 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 23 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 389; in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start: 58; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 385MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept13 Oct

Play back 13 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 3 Oct 6 Oct 10 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

44km/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: 1.3 mm on 15 Oct.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,345 ha in 2016, 3,974 ha in 2018, 1,200 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,224 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.2% of the area of London (99 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

Cuvelai where it started

5,050 ha reached on 23 Sept

0.3 %
Cuanhama

4,849 ha reached on 26 Sept

0.2 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
23 Sept	35.8 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
24 Sept	35.5 °C	9 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
25 Sept	36.2 °C	10 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
26 Sept	36.2 °C	10 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
27 Sept	36.4 °C	9 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
28 Sept	34.9 °C	8 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
29 Sept	36.3 °C	6 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
30 Sept	35.2 °C	10 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
1 Oct	34.5 °C	6 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
2 Oct	32.4 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
3 Oct	33.5 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
4 Oct	37.2 °C	6 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
5 Oct	37.9 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
6 Oct	37.7 °C	10 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
7 Oct	36.5 °C	7 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
8 Oct	34.5 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
9 Oct	34.0 °C	13 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
10 Oct	34.0 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
11 Oct	35.5 °C	7 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
12 Oct	36.2 °C	5 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
13 Oct	35.0 °C	10 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 67
14 Oct after	35.5 °C	16 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
15 Oct after	33.8 °C	28 %	48 km/h	1.3 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Sept 2020

After · 20 Oct 2020

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.

Detections table · 389Every 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 Cuvelai fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2020 to 13 October 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2020 to 7 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,860 hectares (98.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cuvelai (5,050 ha, 0.3 %); Cuanhama (4,849 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class 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 ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 7 October 2020 → 13 October 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 25 September 2020 → 23 September 2020.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 September 2020 to 7 October 2020. 389 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned