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Lethlakane fire, 14 September 2022 Lethlakane, Serowe

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2022, 11:30 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2022 in Lethlakane, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,551 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Central District since 2016 (of 206 with a page). Number 32 in Botswana in 2022, of 327.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Serowe · 2018Serowe · 2019Serowe · 2019Serowe · 2023

Burnt area
16,551ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
14 Sept 2022 – 19 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
14 Sept
2022
Heat detections
559
in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
2.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept19 Sept
20 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2022 · 17 MW · 6 15 Sept 2022 · 1,618 MW · 62 16 Sept 2022 · 11,306 MW · 308 17 Sept 2022 · 864 MW · 75 18 Sept 2022 · 508 MW · 19 19 Sept 2022 · 569 MW · 71 20 Sept 2022 · 469 MW · 18
14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
59km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 63 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (166 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. Lethlakane where it started
    10,475 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Serowe
    6,163 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.2 %

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 area1.2 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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)
14 Sept 26.1 °C 34 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Sept 28.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept 31.2 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
17 Sept 31.4 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Sept 32.5 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Sept 34.4 °C 15 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
20 Sept after 28.7 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
21 Sept after 29.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Sept after 31.2 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Sept after 34.0 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Sept after 34.2 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Sept after 33.5 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Sept after 33.6 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Sept after 36.2 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
28 Sept after 32.4 °C 23 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
29 Sept after 31.7 °C 22 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2022
After · 26 Sept 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 18 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 127 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak127 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10181 µg/m³
Optical depth1.12
1213141516171819202122
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 · 559Every 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 Botswana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lethlakane fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 September 2022 and 19 September 2022: 6 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 16,551 hectares (165.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lethlakane (10,475 ha, 0.4 %); Serowe (6,163 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 59 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 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 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. 559 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 (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.