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Mashare fire, 17 September 2018 Mashare

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2018, 12:52 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2018 in Mashare, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,547 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 74th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 16 in Namibia in 2018, of 83.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mashare · 2017Mashare · 2023Mashare · 2024Mashare · 2022

Burnt area
7,547ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
17 Sept 2018 – 26 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
constituencies
Started on
17 Sept
2018
Heat detections
304
in a single hotspot: 142 MW
Danger at start
64
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
458MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept26 Sept
26 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2018 · 315 MW · 24 18 Sept 2018 · 0 MW · 1 19 Sept 2018 · 56 MW · 8 20 Sept 2018 · 574 MW · 35 21 Sept 2018 · 498 MW · 40 22 Sept 2018 · 245 MW · 40 23 Sept 2018 · 411 MW · 25 24 Sept 2018 · 121 MW · 26 25 Sept 2018 · 2,287 MW · 92 26 Sept 2018 · 69 MW · 13
17 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 25 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

36°high
46km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 406 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (75 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. Mashare where it started
    7,603 ha reached on 17 Sept
    0.8 %

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)
17 Sept 36.1 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
18 Sept 36.5 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
19 Sept 35.9 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Sept 33.7 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
21 Sept 34.8 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
22 Sept 35.1 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
23 Sept 35.0 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
24 Sept 34.6 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Sept 35.0 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Sept 35.3 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Sept after 35.4 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Sept after 35.9 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Sept after 35.0 °C 16 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
30 Sept after 33.5 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
1 Oct after 31.5 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Oct after 32.5 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Oct after 33.9 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Oct after 33.5 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Oct after 33.9 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
6 Oct after 34.2 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2018
After · 3 Oct 2018

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 · 304Every 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 Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mashare fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2018 and 26 September 2018: 10 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 7,547 hectares (75.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mashare (7,603 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 304 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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.