Burned area
satellite only7,575ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026 – 26 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ZM · Zambia · –
Mufumbwe fire, 20 October 2026 Mufumbwe
Out · last detection 26 Oct 2026, 00:01 UTC
The fire started on 20 October 2026 in Mufumbwe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,575 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 119 in Zambia in 2026, of 618.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
Use this data
Compare with…
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Fire page data · version 2026-10-27matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only7days
20 Oct 2026 to 26 Oct 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 26 Oct 2026, 00:01 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only20 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only115
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 171 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026 – 26 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,266MW
Total radiative power on 25 October 2026; hotspots that day: 115.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 25 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model52.7FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 9.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.9°C · 15% RH
High of 38.9 °C and minimum humidity of 15% on 23 October 2026; gusts of 52 km/h on 24 October 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026 – 26 Oct 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 26 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
logArea: 6,969 → 7,575 ha.
-
logStart date: 24 October 2026 → 20 October 2026.
-
logPage published (6,969 ha).
What was saved on 27 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 7,575 ha
- Dates
- 20 Oct 2026 – ongoing
- Name
- Mufumbwe
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/mufumbwe-2026-10-3?v=2026-10-27A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire mufumbwe-2026-10-3.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-20 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 20.1 | 13 | 18.2 | 32.4 | 0 | 52.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-21 | 0 | 0 | 37.5 | 22.8 | 14 | 17.1 | 32.8 | 0 | 54.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-22 | 0 | 0 | 38 | 21.8 | 13 | 14.8 | 33.1 | 0 | 58.3 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-23 | 0 | 0 | 38.9 | 22.6 | 15 | 19 | 34.6 | 0.2 | 64.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-24 | 0 | 0 | 37.1 | 23.7 | 19 | 28 | 51.8 | 0.4 | 95 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-25 | 115 | 1,266 | 35.2 | 22.1 | 17 | 24.6 | 44.3 | 0 | 81.2 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-26 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 22.5 | 22 | 20.9 | 42.5 | 0 | 67.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-27 | 0 | 0 | 35.7 | 22.7 | 19 | 14.4 | 33.5 | 0 | 51.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-10-28 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 21 | 16 | 15.4 | 30.6 | 0.1 | 52.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-10-29 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 22.8 | 22 | 31.7 | 62.6 | 7.8 | 42.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 7,575ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 20 Oct 2026 – 26 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 115
- in a single hotspot: 171 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.3GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Oct26 Oct
26 Oct 2026
How it evolved, day by day
20 Oct
24 Oct
25 Oct
26 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
39°high
52km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity
It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.8 mm on 29 Oct.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,519 ha in 2016, 3,639 ha in 2017, 2,140 ha in 2018, 5,152 ha in 2019, 729 ha in 2020, 802 ha in 2021, 2,901 ha in 2022, 657 ha in 2023, 451 ha in 2024, 1,193 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,875 ha that had burned before.
- 4,960 ha Kasempa fire, August 2019 45,963 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,930 ha Mufumbwe fire, August 2018 4,183 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,302 ha Mufumbwe fire, August 2017 42,217 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,193 ha Mufumbwe fire, August 2025 134,611 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,014 ha Mufumbwe fire, October 2022 5,000 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 759 ha Mufumbwe fire, July 2016 3,266 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 427 ha Mufumbwe fire, September 2023 9,556 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
-
Mufumbwe where it started7,644 ha reached on 20 Oct0.4 %
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 2025Built-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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
Started with Very dry air: 4.3 % of the area in Zambia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct | 37.0 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 21 Oct | 37.5 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 22 Oct | 38.0 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 23 Oct | 38.9 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 24 Oct | 37.1 °C | 19 % | 52 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very extreme 95 |
| 25 Oct | 35.2 °C | 17 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
| 26 Oct | 35.0 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 27 Oct after | 35.7 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 28 Oct after | 36.1 °C | 16 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 Oct after | 35.0 °C | 22 % | 63 km/h | 7.8 mm | Very high 42 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Oct 2026
After · 2 Nov 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 22 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 169 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak169 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10172 µg/m³
Optical depth1.02
WHO 15
22232425
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 · 115Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 134,611 haMufumbweAugust 2025 · 33 days · 8 km away
- 42,217 haMufumbweAugust 2017 · 19 days · 15 km away
- 45,963 haKasempa29 August 2019 · 30 days · 24 km away
- 34,546 haMufumbwe2 September 2025 · 15 days · 30 km away
- 25,793 haMufumbwe5 October 2022 · 15 days · 31 km away
- 24,460 haMufumbwe13 September 2017 · 26 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mufumbwe fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 October 2026 to 26 October 2026 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 October 2026 to 26 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,575 hectares (75.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mufumbwe (7,644 ha, 0.4 %).
- Is the Mufumbwe fire still active?
- No fire detections since 26 Oct 2026, 00:01 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 95, class Very 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 · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 26 October 2026.
- Area: 6,969 → 7,575 ha.
- Start date: 24 October 2026 → 20 October 2026.
- Page published (6,969 ha).
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 24 October 2026 to 26 October 2026. 115 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.
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.