Mavinga fire, 31 August 2025 Mavinga
The fire started on 31 August 2025 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,025 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 35th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 16 in Angola in 2025, of 191.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 22,025ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 31 Aug 2025 – 18 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 31 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 638
- in a single hotspot: 252 MW
- Danger at start
- 60
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 543MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 835 ha in 2016, 5,484 ha in 2017, 5,094 ha in 2018, 10,251 ha in 2019, 4,925 ha in 2020, 6,531 ha in 2021, 3,009 ha in 2022, 8,843 ha in 2023, 125 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 20,653 ha that had burned before.
- 6,531 ha Mavinga fire, September 2021 7,124 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,567 ha Mavinga fire, October 2018 5,454 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,923 ha Mavinga fire, September 2020 6,228 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 462 ha Mavinga fire, September 2020 5,754 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5 ha Mavinga fire, September 2020 12,252 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mavinga where it started22,194 ha reached on 31 Aug0.5 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Aug | 33.7 °C | 7 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 1 Sept | 33.8 °C | 6 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 2 Sept | 33.1 °C | 8 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 3 Sept | 31.6 °C | 10 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 4 Sept | 32.5 °C | 8 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 5 Sept | 33.7 °C | 2 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 6 Sept | 34.8 °C | 5 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 7 Sept | 35.2 °C | 7 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 8 Sept | 35.5 °C | 5 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 9 Sept | 36.0 °C | 7 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 10 Sept | 35.9 °C | 7 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 11 Sept | 34.9 °C | 10 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 12 Sept | 34.9 °C | 7 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 13 Sept | 34.9 °C | 9 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 14 Sept | 35.8 °C | 8 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 15 Sept | 36.1 °C | 5 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 16 Sept | 37.8 °C | 8 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 17 Sept | 37.4 °C | 5 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 18 Sept | 37.6 °C | 8 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 19 Sept after | 36.4 °C | 11 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 20 Sept after | 35.4 °C | 13 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 21 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 22 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 23 Sept after | 35.5 °C | 10 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 24 Sept after | 37.2 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 25 Sept after | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 26 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 11 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 27 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 28 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 8 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 8 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 638Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,252 haMavinga11 September 2020 · 20 days · 17 km away
- 13,010 haMavinga23 August 2025 · 24 days · 20 km away
- 10,588 haMavinga23 August 2019 · 16 days · 23 km away
- 12,335 haMavinga6 September 2023 · 21 days · 35 km away
- 10,530 haMavinga25 September 2025 · 14 days · 36 km away
- 11,340 haRivungo19 September 2022 · 14 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mavinga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2025 to 18 September 2025 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2025 to 18 September 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 22,025 hectares (220.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mavinga (22,194 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 1 September 2025 → 31 August 2025.
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.
Report an error
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 1 September 2025 to 18 September 2025. 638 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.
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.