How long did the Lupane fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2018 to 14 September 2018 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2018 to 11 September 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,301 hectares (73.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lupane (7,328 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

ZW · Zimbabwe · 2018-08-31 → 2018-09-14

Lupane fire, 31 August 2018 Lupane

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2018, 11:37 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2018 in Lupane, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,301 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 35th largest in Matabeleland North since 2016 (of 487 with a page). Number 8 in Zimbabwe in 2018, of 265.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lupane · 2019 Lupane · 2017 Lupane · 2022 Lupane · 2019

Burnt area: 7,301ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 31 Aug 2018 – 14 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 31 Aug; 2018
Heat detections: 348; in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 241MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug14 Sept

Play back 14 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 14 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

33°high

50km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days 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?

It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 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

Lupane where it started

7,328 ha reached on 31 Aug

0.7 %

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)
1 Sept	29.4 °C	16 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept	29.2 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Sept	31.7 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Sept	32.4 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
5 Sept	32.5 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
6 Sept	31.8 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 Sept	33.4 °C	23 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
8 Sept	32.2 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 45
9 Sept	28.6 °C	6 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
10 Sept	27.9 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
11 Sept	28.5 °C	19 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Sept	30.5 °C	21 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
13 Sept	32.3 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Sept	33.7 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
15 Sept after	33.6 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
16 Sept after	34.9 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
17 Sept after	34.3 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
18 Sept after	34.7 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
19 Sept after	34.5 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
20 Sept after	35.0 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
21 Sept after	33.4 °C	18 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Aug 2018

After · 21 Sept 2018

Before After

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 · 348Every 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

All fires in Zimbabwe ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lupane fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2018 to 14 September 2018 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2018 to 11 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,301 hectares (73.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lupane (7,328 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2018 to 11 September 2018. 348 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 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.

Where it burned