Karonga fire, October 2024 Karonga
The fire started on 19 October 2024 in Karonga, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,107 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 351th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 420 with a page). Number 30 in Malawi in 2024, of 39.
The power measured by the satellite is low (14.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 1,107ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 19 Oct 2024 – 29 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 32
- in a single hotspot: 15 MW
- Energy released
- 201MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 508 ha in 2016, 990 ha in 2017, 900 ha in 2019, 68 ha in 2020, 103 ha in 2022, 379 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,109 ha that had burned before.
- 990 ha Karonga fire, October 2017 2,050 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 900 ha Karonga fire, October 2019 2,176 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 508 ha Karonga fire, October 2016 1,517 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 379 ha Karonga fire, October 2023 1,756 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 103 ha Karonga fire, October 2022 1,140 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 68 ha Karonga fire, October 2020 1,606 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Karonga where it started1,113 ha reached on 21 Oct0.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 17 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 32Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Karonga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 October 2024 and 29 October 2024: 11 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 1,107 hectares (11.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Karonga (1,113 ha, 0.3 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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
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
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.