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Mpika fire, 27 September 2022 Mpika

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2022, 22:52 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2022 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,191 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 92th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 518 with a page). Number 32 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpika · 2017Mpika · 2020Mpika · 2025Mpika · 2016

Burnt area
10,191ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
27 Sept 2022 – 15 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Sept
2022
Heat detections
439
in a single hotspot: 76 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
148MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept15 Oct
16 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2022 · 6 MW · 3 28 Sept 2022 · 23 MW · 9 29 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 7 30 Sept 2022 · 108 MW · 18 1 Oct 2022 · 44 MW · 9 2 Oct 2022 · 114 MW · 10 3 Oct 2022 · 35 MW · 15 4 Oct 2022 · 458 MW · 48 5 Oct 2022 · 115 MW · 16 6 Oct 2022 · 216 MW · 28 7 Oct 2022 · 116 MW · 19 8 Oct 2022 · 193 MW · 35 9 Oct 2022 · 539 MW · 43 10 Oct 2022 · 41 MW · 23 11 Oct 2022 · 16 MW · 14 12 Oct 2022 · 335 MW · 53 13 Oct 2022 · 444 MW · 60 14 Oct 2022 · 100 MW · 21 15 Oct 2022 · 30 MW · 4 16 Oct 2022 · 11 MW · 4
27 Sept 30 Sept 3 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 15 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
42km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,523 ha in 2016, 5,456 ha in 2017, 1,251 ha in 2018, 4,949 ha in 2020, 2,229 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,485 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (102 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. Mpika where it started
    10,261 ha reached on 27 Sept
    0.6 %

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)
3 Oct 34.5 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Oct 36.4 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Oct 36.8 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Oct 36.8 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
7 Oct 35.5 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 Oct 35.5 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
9 Oct 33.5 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Oct 35.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
11 Oct 35.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
12 Oct 35.1 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Oct 36.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Oct 36.3 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Oct 35.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
16 Oct after 36.1 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Oct after 36.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
18 Oct after 36.5 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Oct after 37.3 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct after 35.1 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Oct after 37.2 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Oct after 36.4 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Oct after 37.1 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Oct after 37.2 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2022
After · 22 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 6 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM1066 µg/m³
Optical depth0.98
252627282930123456789101112131415161718
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 · 439Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mpika fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2022 to 15 October 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 October 2022 to 14 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,191 hectares (101.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpika (10,261 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 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 Zambia (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: 14 October 2022 → 15 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 3 October 2022 → 27 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 3 October 2022 to 14 October 2022. 439 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.