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Mpungu fire, 27 September 2022 Mpungu

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2022, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2022 in Mpungu, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,604 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 24th largest in Kavango West since 2016 (of 152 with a page). Number 29 in Namibia in 2022, of 119.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpungu · 2018Mpungu · 2018Mpungu · 2018Mpungu · 2026

Burnt area
5,604ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
27 Sept 2022 – 10 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
constituencies
Started on
27 Sept
2022
Heat detections
212
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
188MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept10 Oct
10 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2022 · 6 MW · 1 28 Sept 2022 · 23 MW · 2 29 Sept 2022 · 99 MW · 7 30 Sept 2022 · 24 MW · 4 1 Oct 2022 · 188 MW · 17 2 Oct 2022 · 231 MW · 30 3 Oct 2022 · 150 MW · 12 4 Oct 2022 · 231 MW · 23 5 Oct 2022 · 662 MW · 36 6 Oct 2022 · 294 MW · 35 7 Oct 2022 · 585 MW · 19 8 Oct 2022 · 49 MW · 10 9 Oct 2022 · 45 MW · 10 10 Oct 2022 · 48 MW · 6
27 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 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

38°high
54km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 388 ha in 2016, 2,859 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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. Mpungu where it started
    5,618 ha reached on 27 Sept
    0.7 %

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)
27 Sept 36.7 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Sept 37.6 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
29 Sept 36.0 °C 14 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
30 Sept 36.3 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Oct 37.3 °C 9 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
2 Oct 36.5 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
3 Oct 37.2 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
4 Oct 37.5 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
5 Oct 38.5 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
6 Oct 37.3 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
7 Oct 37.6 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
8 Oct 35.8 °C 7 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
9 Oct 35.3 °C 9 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
10 Oct 36.2 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
11 Oct after 35.8 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
12 Oct after 36.3 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
13 Oct after 35.8 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Oct after 35.5 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Oct after 35.7 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
16 Oct after 31.0 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 49
17 Oct after 30.2 °C 27 % 38 km/h 1.5 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2022
After · 17 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.

Detections table · 212Every 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 Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mpungu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 September 2022 and 10 October 2022: 14 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 5,604 hectares (56.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpungu (5,618 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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. 212 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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO)). 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.