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Mahalapye fire, October 2022 Mahalapye, Kgatleng

Out · last measured on 15 Oct 2022

The fire started on 12 October 2022 in Mahalapye, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,282 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Central District since 2016 (of 212 with a page). Number 28 in Botswana in 2022, of 327.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mahalapye · 2026Mahalapye · 2026Kgatleng · 2023Mahalapye · 2022

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
18,282ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
12 Oct 2022 – 15 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
12 Oct
2022
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
50km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 23 Oct.

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 12% of the area of London (183 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. Mahalapye where it started
    13,560 ha
    1.2 %
  2. Kgatleng
    4,829 ha
    0.6 %

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 area0.43 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.43 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
12 Oct 35.5 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
13 Oct 35.4 °C 8 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
14 Oct 36.5 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
15 Oct 35.7 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
16 Oct after 29.4 °C 34 % 61 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 47
17 Oct after 25.7 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
18 Oct after 29.1 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Oct after 30.8 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Oct after 32.3 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Oct after 33.7 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Oct after 33.4 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Oct after 32.3 °C 28 % 47 km/h 2.6 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Oct 2022
After · 22 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 14 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 167 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 49: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak167 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10238 µg/m³
Optical depth1.37
101112131415161718
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Botswana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mahalapye fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 October 2022 and 15 October 2022: 4 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 18,282 hectares (182.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mahalapye (13,560 ha, 1.2 %); Kgatleng (4,829 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Botswana (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. No 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 (Public Domain). 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.