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Mavinga fire, 5 September 2022 Mavinga

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2022, 12:22 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2022 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,008 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 654th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 143 in Angola in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavinga · 2025Nancova · 2025

Burnt area
5,008ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
5 Sept 2022 – 12 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Sept
2022
Heat detections
198
in a single hotspot: 69 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
249MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

12 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept12 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 2022 · 288 MW · 14 6 Sept 2022 · 1,020 MW · 87 7 Sept 2022 · 357 MW · 38 8 Sept 2022 · 47 MW · 10 9 Sept 2022 · 38 MW · 8 10 Sept 2022 · 32 MW · 6 11 Sept 2022 · 24 MW · 4 12 Sept 2022 · 183 MW · 6
5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 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

34°high
49km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 596 ha in 2016, 1,100 ha in 2017, 108 ha in 2018, 323 ha in 2019, 1,459 ha in 2020, 712 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,119 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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
    5,049 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.1 %

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)
5 Sept 32.4 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 34.2 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
7 Sept 34.0 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Sept 32.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
9 Sept 32.4 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Sept 32.0 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Sept 32.7 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Sept 33.9 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept after 32.9 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Sept after 32.1 °C 17 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
15 Sept after 31.3 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Sept after 30.6 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 Sept after 31.7 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Sept after 33.5 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept after 34.1 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
20 Sept after 30.1 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Sept after 32.0 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Sept after 34.1 °C 8 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2022
After · 19 Sept 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.

Detections table · 198Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2022 and 12 September 2022: 8 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 5,008 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mavinga (5,049 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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

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. 198 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 (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.