Lunte fire, 19 September 2017 Lunte, Luwingu, Kawambwa
The fire started on 19 September 2017 in Lunte, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,550 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 106th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 47 in Zambia in 2017, of 230.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 8,550ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 19 Sept 2017 – 30 Sept 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 19 Sept
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 274
- in a single hotspot: 257 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 654MW
- detected power per day, on average
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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 5 Oct.
This area had burned before
5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 451 ha in 2016.
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
-
Lunte where it started7,756 ha reached on 19 Sept1.0 %
-
629 ha reached on 21 Sept0.1 %
-
224 ha reached on 24 Sept0.0 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Sept | 30.3 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Sept | 29.4 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Sept | 30.0 °C | 22 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 22 Sept | 29.3 °C | 21 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 23 Sept | 29.4 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Sept | 29.5 °C | 22 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Sept | 30.4 °C | 22 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 26 Sept | 29.3 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Sept | 29.1 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Sept | 30.4 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Sept | 30.4 °C | 20 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 30 Sept | 27.8 °C | 30 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Oct after | 29.0 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Oct after | 29.5 °C | 26 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Oct after | 31.0 °C | 22 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 4 Oct after | 30.6 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Oct after | 28.9 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 1.0 mm | High 24 |
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.
Detections table · 274Every 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 Lunte fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 September 2017 and 30 September 2017: 12 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 8,550 hectares (85.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lunte (7,756 ha, 1.0 %); Luwingu (629 ha, 0.1 %); Kawambwa (224 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
- 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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 274 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 (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.