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Luangwa fire, September 2022 Luangwa

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2022, 11:13 UTC

The fire started on 29 September 2022 in Luangwa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,382 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Lusaka since 2016 (of 79 with a page). Number 16 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luangwa · 2018Luangwa · 2017Luangwa · 2021Luangwa · 2017

Burnt area
14,382ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
29 Sept 2022 – 23 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
29 Sept
2022
Heat detections
623
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
149MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Sept23 Oct
23 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

29 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 4 1 Oct 2022 · 12 MW · 2 3 Oct 2022 · 16 MW · 6 4 Oct 2022 · 76 MW · 22 5 Oct 2022 · 202 MW · 43 6 Oct 2022 · 182 MW · 54 7 Oct 2022 · 215 MW · 34 8 Oct 2022 · 93 MW · 26 9 Oct 2022 · 130 MW · 39 10 Oct 2022 · 313 MW · 58 11 Oct 2022 · 80 MW · 22 12 Oct 2022 · 33 MW · 5 13 Oct 2022 · 93 MW · 24 14 Oct 2022 · 140 MW · 20 15 Oct 2022 · 261 MW · 63 16 Oct 2022 · 469 MW · 83 17 Oct 2022 · 529 MW · 50 18 Oct 2022 · 291 MW · 38 19 Oct 2022 · 226 MW · 19 20 Oct 2022 · 17 MW · 2 21 Oct 2022 · 16 MW · 3 22 Oct 2022 · 15 MW · 4 23 Oct 2022 · 10 MW · 2
29 Sept 5 Oct 9 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 21 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

38°high
53km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,008 ha in 2017, 3,389 ha in 2018, 268 ha in 2019, 2,498 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,451 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.1% of the area of London (144 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. Luangwa where it started
    14,474 ha reached on 29 Sept
    3.7 %

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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
29 Sept 33.3 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Sept 34.4 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Oct 34.9 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Oct 35.7 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Oct 36.1 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Oct 37.9 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Oct 38.3 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Oct 37.1 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Oct 37.8 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
8 Oct 35.7 °C 20 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
9 Oct 35.7 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
10 Oct 36.6 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Oct 35.9 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Oct 36.1 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Oct 37.1 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Oct 36.6 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Oct 37.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Oct 36.1 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Oct 36.2 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Oct 35.9 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Oct 34.9 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Oct 34.4 °C 34 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47
21 Oct 36.0 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Oct 36.6 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Oct 37.6 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Oct after 38.3 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Oct after 37.9 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Oct after 39.8 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Oct after 40.1 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 52
28 Oct after 38.1 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Oct after 36.8 °C 27 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Oct after 36.2 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Oct after 39.0 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Nov after 37.4 °C 25 % 57 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 54
2 Nov after 33.4 °C 40 % 53 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Sept 2022
After · 30 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 17 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³
Days over the guideline25 days
PM1060 µg/m³
Optical depth1.12
272829301234567891011121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 623Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Luangwa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 September 2022 to 23 October 2022 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 October 2022 to 19 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,382 hectares (143.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Luangwa (14,474 ha, 3.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 October 2022 → 23 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 3 October 2022 → 29 September 2022.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 October 2022 to 19 October 2022. 623 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.

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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.