Burned area
satellite only8,840ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BW · Botswana · –
Ghanzi fire, 31 October 2026 Ghanzi
Out · last detection 5 Nov 2026, 23:58 UTC
The fire started on 31 October 2026 in Ghanzi, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,840 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 45 in Botswana in 2026, of 286.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ghanzi · 2021Ghanzi · 2017Ghanzi · 2021Ghanzi · 2017
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-07matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only5days
31 Oct 2026 to 4 Nov 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 5 Nov 2026, 23:58 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only31 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only238
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 90 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,236MW
Total radiative power on 2 November 2026; hotspots that day: 112.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model78.3FWI · very extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 25.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.5°C · 15% RH
High of 38.5 °C and minimum humidity of 15% on 4 November 2026; gusts of 45 km/h on 31 October 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 7 November 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
logPage published (8,840 ha).
What was saved on 7 November 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 8,840 ha
- Dates
- 31 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
- Name
- Ghanzi
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/ghanzi-2026-10-16?v=2026-11-07A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire ghanzi-2026-10-16.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-31 | 77 | 870 | 36 | 20.5 | 15 | 25 | 45 | 0 | 78.3 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-01 | 19 | 461 | 37.7 | 21.7 | 12 | 22.4 | 43.2 | 0 | 71 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-02 | 112 | 1,236 | 36 | 24.6 | 14 | 30.3 | 41.4 | 0 | 69.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-03 | 11 | 132 | 37.4 | 22.1 | 15 | 24.3 | 42.5 | 0 | 79.4 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-04 | 11 | 102 | 38.5 | 23.5 | 15 | 21.4 | 38.9 | 0 | 70.3 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-05 | 8 | 14 | 38.9 | 24.1 | 16 | 28.5 | 51.5 | 0 | 87.9 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-06 | 0 | 0 | 39.7 | 23.2 | 13 | 21.9 | 42.5 | 0.3 | 77 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-07 | 0 | 0 | 37.7 | 22 | 18 | 19.5 | 35.3 | 4.1 | 37.9 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 8,840ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 31 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 31 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 238
- in a single hotspot: 90 MW
- Danger at start
- 78
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 469MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
31 Oct4 Nov
5 Nov 2026
How it evolved, day by day
31 Oct
2 Nov
4 Nov
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
45km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity
It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 7 Nov.
This area had burned before
46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,593 ha in 2017, 2,500 ha in 2021, 199 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,081 ha that had burned before.
- 1,754 ha Ghanzi fire, November 2021 2,891 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,406 ha Ghanzi fire, August 2017 35,329 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 357 ha Ghanzi fire, November 2021 3,959 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 187 ha Ghanzi fire, August 2017 3,508 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Ghanzi where it started8,844 ha reached on 31 Oct0.1 %
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Oct | 36.0 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 1 Nov | 37.7 °C | 12 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 2 Nov | 36.0 °C | 14 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 3 Nov | 37.4 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 4 Nov | 38.5 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 5 Nov after | 38.9 °C | 16 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 88 |
| 6 Nov after | 39.7 °C | 13 % | 42 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 7 Nov after | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 4.1 mm | High 38 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 24 Oct 2026
After · 7 Nov 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · CopernicusOn 3 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 75 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak75 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1077 µg/m³
Optical depth0.89
WHO 15
29 Oct31 Oct2 Nov4 Nov6 Nov
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 · 238Every 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
- 13,866 haGhanzi 31 October 2026 · 6 days · 18 km away
- 35,329 haGhanzi27 August 2017 · 7 days · 21 km away
- 31,996 haGhanzi7 September 2023 · 5 days · 29 km away
- 14,728 haGhanzi7 September 2023 · 5 days · 29 km away
- 27,857 haGhanzi28 August 2017 · 6 days · 31 km away
- 162,366 haGhanzi 27 October 2026 · 12 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ghanzi fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 October 2026 to 4 November 2026 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,840 hectares (88.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ghanzi (8,844 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Ghanzi fire still active?
- No fire detections since 5 Nov 2026, 23:58 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, class Very extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Botswana (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 7 November 2026.
- Page published (8,840 ha).
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
Report an error
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 31 October 2026 to 2 November 2026. 238 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.