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Mungwi fire, 27 August 2017 Mungwi

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2017, 10:30 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2017 in Mungwi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,165 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 176th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 629 with a page). Number 71 in Zambia in 2017, of 230.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mungwi · 2016Mungwi · 2025Mungwi · 2026Mungwi · 2016

Burnt area
6,165ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
27 Aug 2017 – 20 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Aug
2017
Heat detections
236
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
143MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug20 Sept
20 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 2017 · 19 MW · 4 28 Aug 2017 · 14 MW · 1 30 Aug 2017 · 5 MW · 1 31 Aug 2017 · 156 MW · 11 1 Sept 2017 · 86 MW · 7 3 Sept 2017 · 260 MW · 9 4 Sept 2017 · 48 MW · 5 5 Sept 2017 · 217 MW · 9 6 Sept 2017 · 474 MW · 43 7 Sept 2017 · 401 MW · 39 8 Sept 2017 · 441 MW · 24 9 Sept 2017 · 454 MW · 28 10 Sept 2017 · 213 MW · 22 11 Sept 2017 · 72 MW · 5 12 Sept 2017 · 32 MW · 4 13 Sept 2017 · 68 MW · 8 14 Sept 2017 · 37 MW · 5 16 Sept 2017 · 79 MW · 4 17 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 1 18 Sept 2017 · 44 MW · 2 19 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 3 20 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 1
27 Aug 1 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 14 Sept 19 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

31°high
41km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,516 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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. Mungwi where it started
    6,201 ha reached on 27 Aug
    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 Sept 28.2 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Sept 28.6 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Sept 29.1 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept 29.2 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Sept 29.6 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Sept 29.4 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 30.3 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Sept 30.0 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 30.6 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept 30.6 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 30.0 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept 30.1 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Sept 31.0 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Sept 31.0 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Sept 32.3 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept 31.7 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept 31.7 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept 31.4 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept after 31.3 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept after 30.3 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 29.9 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2017
After · 27 Sept 2017

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 · 236Every 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 Mungwi fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 August 2017 to 20 September 2017 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2017 to 13 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,165 hectares (61.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mungwi (6,201 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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: 13 September 2017 → 20 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 3 September 2017 → 27 August 2017.

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 September 2017 to 13 September 2017. 236 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.