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Hwange fire, 16 September 2022 Hwange

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2022, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2022 in Hwange, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 32,130 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Matabeleland North since 2016 (of 487 with a page). Number 5 in Zimbabwe in 2022, of 346.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hwange · 2018Hwange · 2018Hwange · 2018Hwange · 2019

Burnt area
32,130ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
16 Sept 2022 – 17 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
16 Sept
2022
Heat detections
1,534
in a single hotspot: 147 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
464MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept17 Oct
17 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2022 · 247 MW · 66 17 Sept 2022 · 195 MW · 47 18 Sept 2022 · 1,431 MW · 37 19 Sept 2022 · 53 MW · 8 20 Sept 2022 · 211 MW · 20 21 Sept 2022 · 769 MW · 40 22 Sept 2022 · 204 MW · 61 23 Sept 2022 · 54 MW · 10 24 Sept 2022 · 149 MW · 8 25 Sept 2022 · 79 MW · 10 26 Sept 2022 · 85 MW · 16 27 Sept 2022 · 227 MW · 31 28 Sept 2022 · 195 MW · 46 29 Sept 2022 · 126 MW · 23 30 Sept 2022 · 144 MW · 27 1 Oct 2022 · 109 MW · 22 2 Oct 2022 · 217 MW · 56 3 Oct 2022 · 146 MW · 21 4 Oct 2022 · 93 MW · 18 5 Oct 2022 · 121 MW · 15 6 Oct 2022 · 115 MW · 18 7 Oct 2022 · 172 MW · 25 8 Oct 2022 · 45 MW · 13 9 Oct 2022 · 108 MW · 30 10 Oct 2022 · 1,097 MW · 127 11 Oct 2022 · 2,224 MW · 187 12 Oct 2022 · 2,659 MW · 276 13 Oct 2022 · 1,311 MW · 139 14 Oct 2022 · 447 MW · 66 15 Oct 2022 · 1,732 MW · 57 16 Oct 2022 · 48 MW · 10 17 Oct 2022 · 45 MW · 4
16 Sept 21 Sept 26 Sept 1 Oct 6 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct 16 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

36°high
53km/h · peak gust
10%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 19 Oct.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 588 ha in 2016, 7,150 ha in 2018, 1,151 ha in 2019, 78 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 20% of the area of London (321 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. Hwange where it started
    31,407 ha reached on 20 Sept
    1.2 %

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)
16 Sept 29.5 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Sept 30.6 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 33.1 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept 34.1 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Sept 31.9 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept 32.3 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept 33.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Sept 34.4 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Sept 33.5 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Sept 33.1 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Sept 33.7 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Sept 34.7 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Sept 33.1 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Sept 32.4 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
30 Sept 32.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
1 Oct 33.8 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Oct 34.4 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Oct 35.6 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Oct 36.5 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Oct 36.0 °C 14 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
6 Oct 35.3 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
7 Oct 35.5 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
8 Oct 34.3 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
9 Oct 33.9 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
10 Oct 33.8 °C 11 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
11 Oct 33.1 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
12 Oct 33.2 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
13 Oct 34.3 °C 15 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
14 Oct 34.9 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Oct 35.5 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
16 Oct 35.3 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
17 Oct 33.9 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Oct after 33.0 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 57
19 Oct after 32.8 °C 24 % 40 km/h 1.3 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2022
After · 24 Oct 2022

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 13 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline26 days
PM1083 µg/m³
Optical depth1.31
1920212223242526272829301234567891011121314151617181920
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 · 1,534Every 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 Zimbabwe ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Hwange fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 September 2022 to 17 October 2022 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2022 to 17 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 32,130 hectares (321.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hwange (31,407 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 September 2022 to 17 October 2022. 1,534 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.