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Lupane fire, 26 September 2022 Lupane

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2022, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2022 in Lupane, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,027 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 102th largest in Matabeleland North since 2016 (of 487 with a page). Number 36 in Zimbabwe in 2022, of 346.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lupane · 2019Lupane · 2018Lupane · 2019Lupane · 2026

Burnt area
4,027ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
26 Sept 2022 – 14 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
26 Sept
2022
Heat detections
281
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
104MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept14 Oct
15 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

26 Sept 2022 · 59 MW · 5 27 Sept 2022 · 189 MW · 29 28 Sept 2022 · 78 MW · 14 29 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 2 30 Sept 2022 · 12 MW · 1 2 Oct 2022 · 20 MW · 6 3 Oct 2022 · 74 MW · 14 4 Oct 2022 · 379 MW · 51 5 Oct 2022 · 173 MW · 30 6 Oct 2022 · 64 MW · 12 7 Oct 2022 · 135 MW · 17 8 Oct 2022 · 133 MW · 26 9 Oct 2022 · 146 MW · 18 10 Oct 2022 · 261 MW · 24 11 Oct 2022 · 155 MW · 15 12 Oct 2022 · 43 MW · 5 13 Oct 2022 · 17 MW · 6 14 Oct 2022 · 22 MW · 5 15 Oct 2022 · 9 MW · 1
26 Sept 29 Sept 3 Oct 4 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 15 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

37°high
52km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,057 ha in 2018, 2,606 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,479 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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. Lupane where it started
    4,049 ha reached on 26 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area0.28 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.28 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
26 Sept 33.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Sept 35.4 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Sept 33.3 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
29 Sept 31.7 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Sept 32.8 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct 33.7 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Oct 34.8 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Oct 35.7 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Oct 37.0 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Oct 35.5 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
6 Oct 35.1 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Oct 36.4 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
8 Oct 35.6 °C 10 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 Oct 35.3 °C 10 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
10 Oct 36.3 °C 9 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
11 Oct 34.3 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
12 Oct 34.0 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Oct 35.1 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Oct 35.4 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Oct after 35.3 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Oct after 33.0 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Oct after 34.6 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Oct after 33.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct after 32.4 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 50
20 Oct after 33.3 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Oct after 33.0 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Oct after 34.3 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Oct after 34.9 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
24 Oct after 33.1 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Sept 2022
After · 21 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.

Detections table · 281Every 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 Zimbabwe ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lupane fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 September 2022 and 14 October 2022: 19 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 4,027 hectares (40.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lupane (4,049 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 281 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 (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.