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Lupososhi fire, 10 September 2016 Lupososhi

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2016, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2016 in Lupososhi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,295 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 330th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 126 in Zambia in 2016, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lupososhi · 2019Lupososhi · 2021

Burnt area
4,295ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
10 Sept 2016 – 16 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Sept
2016
Heat detections
188
in a single hotspot: 200 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
607MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

17 Sept 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept16 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2016 · 23 MW · 2 11 Sept 2016 · 1,679 MW · 48 12 Sept 2016 · 548 MW · 31 13 Sept 2016 · 11 MW · 1 14 Sept 2016 · 16 MW · 4 15 Sept 2016 · 89 MW · 7 16 Sept 2016 · 2,399 MW · 82 17 Sept 2016 · 91 MW · 8
10 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept 16 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

32°high
42km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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. Lupososhi where it started
    4,320 ha reached on 10 Sept
    1.0 %

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)
10 Sept 31.9 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 31.4 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept 30.4 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 31.0 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Sept 31.5 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept 31.5 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Sept 32.1 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Sept after 33.1 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Sept after 33.4 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Sept after 31.8 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept after 29.7 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept after 30.6 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Sept after 30.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 31.8 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 32.0 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Sept after 32.4 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Sept after 32.0 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2016
After · 23 Sept 2016

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 · 188Every 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 Lupososhi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 September 2016 and 16 September 2016: 7 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 4,295 hectares (43.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lupososhi (4,320 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.

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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. 188 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.