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Mavinga fire, 15 September 2022 Mavinga

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2022, 12:35 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2022 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,137 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 357th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 660 with a page). Number 55 in Angola in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavinga · 2019Mavinga · 2019Bundas · 2019Bundas · 2023

Burnt area
7,137ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
15 Sept 2022 – 8 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Sept
2022
Heat detections
287
in a single hotspot: 193 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
237MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept8 Oct
8 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 Sept 2022 · 50 MW · 5 16 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 17 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 2 18 Sept 2022 · 105 MW · 2 21 Sept 2022 · 13 MW · 3 22 Sept 2022 · 71 MW · 13 23 Sept 2022 · 248 MW · 25 24 Sept 2022 · 190 MW · 12 25 Sept 2022 · 48 MW · 5 26 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 1 27 Sept 2022 · 61 MW · 11 28 Sept 2022 · 1,150 MW · 67 29 Sept 2022 · 159 MW · 23 30 Sept 2022 · 36 MW · 5 1 Oct 2022 · 1,717 MW · 60 2 Oct 2022 · 21 MW · 5 3 Oct 2022 · 179 MW · 9 4 Oct 2022 · 564 MW · 24 5 Oct 2022 · 45 MW · 6 7 Oct 2022 · 12 MW · 2 8 Oct 2022 · 289 MW · 6
15 Sept 18 Sept 23 Sept 26 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 5 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
46km/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

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 243 ha in 2017, 1,311 ha in 2018, 1,886 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,817 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (71 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. Mavinga where it started
    7,140 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
21 Sept 32.5 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept 33.7 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Sept 35.3 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Sept 35.3 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Sept 34.4 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
26 Sept 34.7 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Sept 34.3 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Sept 35.7 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
29 Sept 33.6 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Sept 34.8 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct 35.1 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Oct 34.6 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Oct 35.5 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Oct 36.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Oct 37.0 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
6 Oct 36.0 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Oct 36.0 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Oct 34.9 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
9 Oct after 34.3 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
10 Oct after 34.9 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
11 Oct after 34.9 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Oct after 33.3 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Oct after 35.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Oct after 35.3 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Oct after 35.7 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2022
After · 15 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 5 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 119 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak119 µg/m³
Days over the guideline28 days
PM10170 µg/m³
Optical depth1.23
1314151617181920212223242526272829301234567891011
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)

Detections table · 287Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mavinga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2022 to 8 October 2022 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2022 to 5 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,137 hectares (71.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mavinga (7,140 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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: 5 October 2022 → 8 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 21 September 2022 → 15 September 2022.

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 21 September 2022 to 5 October 2022. 287 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.