How long did the Cuvelai fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 August 2024 and 26 August 2024: 12 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 5,532 hectares (55.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cuvelai (5,555 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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 · 2024-08-15 → 2024-08-26

Cuvelai fire, 15 August 2024 Cuvelai

Out · last detection 27 Aug 2024, 12:16 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2024 in Cuvelai, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,532 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 78th largest in Cunene since 2016 (of 104 with a page). Number 104 in Angola in 2024, of 135.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cuvelai · 2021 Cuvelai · 2019 Cuvelai · 2019 Cuvelai · 2021

Burnt area: 5,532ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 15 Aug 2024 – 26 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 15 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 240; in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start: 60; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 172MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug26 Aug

Play back 27 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 21 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug 25 Aug 27 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

48km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,042 ha in 2016, 1,535 ha in 2017, 773 ha in 2018, 3,210 ha in 2019, 37 ha in 2021, 2,705 ha in 2022, 349 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,861 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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

5,555 ha reached on 10 Aug

0.4 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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	Danger (FWI)
15 Aug	31.1 °C	7 %	47 km/h	Extreme 60
16 Aug	31.4 °C	7 %	45 km/h	Extreme 59
17 Aug	31.6 °C	9 %	45 km/h	Extreme 59
18 Aug	31.0 °C	10 %	43 km/h	Extreme 58
19 Aug	30.5 °C	9 %	48 km/h	Extreme 63
20 Aug	31.2 °C	8 %	45 km/h	Extreme 61
21 Aug	31.2 °C	8 %	45 km/h	Extreme 62
22 Aug	31.1 °C	7 %	40 km/h	Extreme 57
23 Aug	30.8 °C	8 %	46 km/h	Extreme 62
24 Aug	31.4 °C	9 %	44 km/h	Extreme 62
25 Aug	31.6 °C	10 %	44 km/h	Extreme 61
26 Aug	31.5 °C	8 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
27 Aug after	32.5 °C	7 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
28 Aug after	33.3 °C	5 %	40 km/h	Extreme 59
29 Aug after	34.1 °C	5 %	29 km/h	Extreme 54
30 Aug after	33.4 °C	8 %	50 km/h	Extreme 65
31 Aug after	33.0 °C	12 %	54 km/h	Extreme 67
1 Sept after	30.6 °C	16 %	55 km/h	Extreme 64
2 Sept after	30.5 °C	11 %	48 km/h	Extreme 58
3 Sept after	29.8 °C	13 %	51 km/h	Extreme 60
4 Sept after	30.1 °C	9 %	52 km/h	Extreme 61
5 Sept after	31.0 °C	7 %	40 km/h	Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Aug 2024

After · 2 Sept 2024

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 18 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM1060 µg/m³

Optical depth0.59

WHO 15

1314151617181920212223242526272829

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 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 15 August 2024 and 26 August 2024: 12 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 5,532 hectares (55.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cuvelai (5,555 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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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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. 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 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