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Lupososhi fire, 9 September 2020 Lupososhi, Luwingu

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2020, 11:07 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2020 in Lupososhi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,713 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 270th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 101 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lupososhi · 2018Lupososhi · 2019Lupososhi · 2021Kawambwa · 2020

Burnt area
4,713ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
9 Sept 2020 – 26 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
9 Sept
2020
Heat detections
150
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
153MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept26 Sept
26 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2020 · 31 MW · 7 10 Sept 2020 · 24 MW · 4 11 Sept 2020 · 5 MW · 1 12 Sept 2020 · 12 MW · 2 13 Sept 2020 · 77 MW · 3 15 Sept 2020 · 16 MW · 2 16 Sept 2020 · 84 MW · 9 17 Sept 2020 · 36 MW · 8 18 Sept 2020 · 1,100 MW · 51 19 Sept 2020 · 486 MW · 33 20 Sept 2020 · 150 MW · 13 21 Sept 2020 · 50 MW · 4 22 Sept 2020 · 129 MW · 9 24 Sept 2020 · 77 MW · 2 26 Sept 2020 · 14 MW · 2
9 Sept 12 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 22 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
47km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,646 ha in 2016, 591 ha in 2017, 2,700 ha in 2018, 561 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,313 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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
    4,681 ha reached on 9 Sept
    1.1 %
  2. Luwingu
    57 ha reached on 22 Sept
    0.0 %

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 area1.4 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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)
9 Sept 27.4 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 27.8 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept 29.0 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Sept 28.3 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Sept 28.5 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Sept 30.1 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Sept 30.7 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Sept 31.3 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Sept 32.5 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Sept 31.9 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept 31.4 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Sept 32.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Sept 33.2 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Sept 32.2 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept 30.2 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Sept 30.2 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Sept 31.6 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Sept 32.5 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Sept after 34.0 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Sept after 30.8 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
29 Sept after 32.9 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Sept after 31.2 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Oct after 31.8 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Oct after 33.4 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Oct after 32.4 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Oct after 33.4 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Oct after 34.1 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Oct after 33.2 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2020
After · 3 Oct 2020

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 · 150Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 September 2020 to 26 September 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 September 2020 to 22 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,713 hectares (47.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lupososhi (4,681 ha, 1.1 %); Luwingu (57 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

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: 22 September 2020 → 26 September 2020.
  2. Start date: 16 September 2020 → 9 September 2020.

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 16 September 2020 to 22 September 2020. 150 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 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.