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Menongue fire, 2 September 2023 Menongue

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2023, 13:06 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2023 in Menongue, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,196 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 271th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 660 with a page). Number 45 in Angola in 2023, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Menongue · 2025Menongue · 2024Cuito Cuanavale · 2021Menongue · 2016

Burnt area
8,196ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
2 Sept 2023 – 18 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Sept
2023
Heat detections
309
in a single hotspot: 359 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
770MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept18 Sept
18 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Sept 2023 · 15 MW · 3 4 Sept 2023 · 92 MW · 8 5 Sept 2023 · 167 MW · 7 6 Sept 2023 · 32 MW · 2 8 Sept 2023 · 557 MW · 11 9 Sept 2023 · 5,559 MW · 103 10 Sept 2023 · 2,438 MW · 53 11 Sept 2023 · 552 MW · 13 12 Sept 2023 · 608 MW · 24 13 Sept 2023 · 404 MW · 28 14 Sept 2023 · 36 MW · 8 15 Sept 2023 · 169 MW · 14 16 Sept 2023 · 269 MW · 8 17 Sept 2023 · 304 MW · 17 18 Sept 2023 · 347 MW · 10
2 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 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

35°high
52km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,405 ha in 2016, 1,726 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,224 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.2% of the area of London (82 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. Menongue where it started
    8,249 ha reached on 2 Sept
    0.4 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
2 Sept 33.1 °C 6 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Sept 33.5 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
4 Sept 33.1 °C 6 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
5 Sept 33.0 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
6 Sept 33.7 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Sept 33.9 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Sept 33.7 °C 12 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
9 Sept 33.5 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
10 Sept 34.2 °C 6 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Sept 33.8 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Sept 31.0 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
13 Sept 32.4 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Sept 32.8 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Sept 34.1 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Sept 34.8 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Sept 34.8 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Sept 35.0 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Sept after 34.3 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Sept after 33.6 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Sept after 33.8 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 48
22 Sept after 34.0 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Sept after 34.8 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Sept after 34.2 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Sept after 34.2 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Sept after 32.8 °C 8 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Sept after 33.0 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Sept after 33.3 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2023
After · 25 Sept 2023

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 11 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 91 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak91 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10130 µg/m³
Optical depth1.34
31123456789101112131415161718192021
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 · 309Every 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 Menongue fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 September 2023 and 18 September 2023: 17 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 8,196 hectares (82.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Menongue (8,249 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 309 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 2025, 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.