Burned area
satellite only1,281ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 1 Aug 2018 – 3 Aug 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
CG · Republic of the Congo · –
Kimongo fire, 1 August 2018 Kimongo
Out · last detection 4 Aug 2018, 12:50 UTC
The fire started on 1 August 2018 in Kimongo, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,281 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 8th largest in Niari since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 32 in Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 62.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-05matches 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 only3days
1 Aug 2018 to 3 Aug 2018: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 4 Aug 2018, 12:50 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 only1 Aug 2018
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 1 Aug 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
The worst day
satellite only261MW
Total radiative power on 1 August 2018; hotspots that day: 19.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 1 Aug 2018
+− 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
model17.6FWI · moderate
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 1 Aug 2018, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− 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
model27.7°C · 56% RH
High of 27.7 °C and minimum humidity of 56% on 3 August 2018; gusts of 30 km/h on 3 August 2018.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 1 Aug 2018 – 3 Aug 2018
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− 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 24 October 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
-
logName: Ouesso → Kimongo.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 4 August 2018 → 3 August 2018.
-
logStart date: 28 July 2018 → 1 August 2018.
-
logLast day with fire: 3 August 2018 → 4 August 2018.
-
logStart date: 1 August 2018 → 28 July 2018.
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/kimongo-2018-08-4?v=2026-11-05A 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 kimongo-2018-08-4.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-08-01 | 19 | 261 | 27 | 17.8 | 57 | 10.6 | 25.9 | 0 | 17.6 | moderado | 1 |
| 2018-08-02 | 3 | 35 | 26.9 | 17.8 | 58 | 12.3 | 29.5 | 0 | 16.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2018-08-03 | 5 | 9 | 27.7 | 17.5 | 56 | 13.6 | 30.2 | 0 | 15.1 | moderado | 1 |
| 2018-08-04 | 2 | 56 | 24.7 | 18.7 | 70 | 11.5 | 26.6 | 0 | 15.1 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-05 | 0 | 0 | 26.3 | 19.6 | 63 | 12.4 | 31.3 | 0 | 18.2 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-06 | 0 | 0 | 24.5 | 18.8 | 68 | 9.8 | 28.1 | 0 | 16.6 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-07 | 0 | 0 | 29.2 | 18.7 | 48 | 14.2 | 32.4 | 0 | 16.6 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-08 | 0 | 0 | 24.5 | 18.7 | 67 | 9.7 | 24.1 | 0 | 17.7 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-09 | 0 | 0 | 26.9 | 18.4 | 62 | 11.5 | 25.2 | 0 | 16.9 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-10 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 17.8 | 59 | 11 | 28.8 | 0 | 16 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-11 | 0 | 0 | 25.4 | 19.2 | 67 | 12 | 28.8 | 0 | 16.5 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-12 | 0 | 0 | 24.6 | 19.9 | 68 | 11.8 | 30.2 | 0 | 18.7 | moderado | 0 |
| 2018-08-13 | 0 | 0 | 27.1 | 19.8 | 62 | 9.2 | 22 | 0 | 16 | moderado | 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), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,281ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 1 Aug 2018 – 3 Aug 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 1 Aug
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 29
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 18
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 90MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
1 Aug3 Aug
4 Aug 2018
How it evolved, day by day
1 Aug
2 Aug
3 Aug
4 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
28°high
30km/h · peak gust
56%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Kimongo where it started1,290 ha0.6 %
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)
Started with 60 days without rain: 12 % of the area in Republic of the Congo
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Aug | 27.0 °C | 57 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 2 Aug | 26.9 °C | 58 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 3 Aug | 27.7 °C | 56 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 4 Aug after | 24.7 °C | 70 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 5 Aug after | 26.3 °C | 63 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 6 Aug after | 24.5 °C | 68 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 7 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 8 Aug after | 24.5 °C | 67 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 9 Aug after | 26.9 °C | 62 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 10 Aug after | 28.0 °C | 59 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 11 Aug after | 25.4 °C | 67 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 12 Aug after | 24.6 °C | 68 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 13 Aug after | 27.1 °C | 62 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 17.6, a minimum humidity of 57% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 12.
FWI at the start
17.6
Minimum humidity
57 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Kimongo fire, 1 August 2018
1,281 ha
3 days
FWI 17.6
Min. humidity 57 %
Loudima fire, July 2024
1,208 ha
6 days
FWI 17.8
Min. humidity 58 %
63 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Loudima fire, August 2016
2,182 ha
4 days
FWI 17.7
Min. humidity 60 %
53 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Nkayi fire, August 2022
1,758 ha
3 days
FWI 18.4
Min. humidity 52 %
26 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Mayama fire, July 2024
1,076 ha
9 days
FWI 20.8
Min. humidity 59 %
250 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Madingou fire, August 2017
1,284 ha
2 days
FWI 17.1
Min. humidity 60 %
75 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 9 Aug.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 12. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
30km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 3 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 25 Jul 2018
After · 10 Aug 2018
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.
Detections table · 0Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kimongo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 August 2018 and 3 August 2018: 3 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 1,281 hectares (12.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kimongo (1,290 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.7 °C, humidity dropped to 56 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries ADM2). 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 · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Name: Ouesso → Kimongo.
- Last day with fire: 4 August 2018 → 3 August 2018.
- Start date: 28 July 2018 → 1 August 2018.
- Last day with fire: 3 August 2018 → 4 August 2018.
- Start date: 1 August 2018 → 28 July 2018.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
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 (Map Library 2007, nombres de Wikidata) (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.