How long did the Cuvelai fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2020 and 10 October 2020: 10 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 5,094 hectares (50.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cuvelai (5,122 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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 · 2020-10-01 → 2020-10-10

Cuvelai fire, October 2020 Cuvelai

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2020, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 1 October 2020 in Cuvelai, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,094 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 98th largest in Cunene since 2016 (of 104 with a page). Number 118 in Angola in 2020, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cuanhama · 2019 Cuvelai · 2019 Cuanhama · 2022 Cuvelai · 2021

Burnt area: 5,094ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 1 Oct 2020 – 10 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 1 Oct; 2020
Heat detections: 185; in a single hotspot: 299 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 207MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Oct10 Oct

Play back 10 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 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

37°high

41km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 15 Oct.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,697 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

5,122 ha reached on 1 Oct

0.3 %

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)
1 Oct	34.1 °C	6 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
2 Oct	31.7 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
3 Oct	33.4 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
4 Oct	36.8 °C	6 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
5 Oct	37.4 °C	11 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
6 Oct	37.1 °C	10 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
7 Oct	36.1 °C	7 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
8 Oct	34.1 °C	13 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
9 Oct	33.5 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
10 Oct	33.6 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
11 Oct after	35.0 °C	8 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
12 Oct after	35.8 °C	4 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
13 Oct after	34.7 °C	10 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
14 Oct after	35.4 °C	15 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
15 Oct after	32.9 °C	27 %	46 km/h	2.3 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Sept 2020

After · 17 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 · 185Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2020 and 10 October 2020: 10 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 5,094 hectares (50.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cuvelai (5,122 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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 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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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 185 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.

Where it burned