How long did the Mungwi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2018 and 10 September 2018: 10 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 3,350 hectares (33.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mungwi (3,369 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

ZM · Zambia · 2018-09-01 → 2018-09-10

Mungwi fire, 1 September 2018 Mungwi

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2018, 11:14 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2018 in Mungwi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,350 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 518th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 165 in Zambia in 2018, of 204.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mungwi · 2017 Mungwi · 2025 Mungwi · 2026 Mungwi · 2016

Burnt area: 3,350ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 1 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 172; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 254MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept10 Sept

Play back 10 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 3 Sept 5 Sept 7 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

32°high

45km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 847 ha in 2016, 1,791 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,123 ha that had burned before.

62 ha Mungwi fire, September 2017 6,165 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (34 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

Mungwi where it started

3,369 ha reached on 25 Aug

0.3 %

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)
1 Sept	28.9 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
2 Sept	29.1 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Sept	30.3 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Sept	30.4 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Sept	30.6 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Sept	29.4 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Sept	30.2 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
8 Sept	29.6 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Sept	31.5 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Sept	28.9 °C	31 %	29 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
11 Sept after	29.3 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Sept after	30.5 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
13 Sept after	30.6 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Sept after	32.0 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
15 Sept after	32.3 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Sept after	32.5 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
17 Sept after	32.0 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Sept after	32.4 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
19 Sept after	31.4 °C	21 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
20 Sept after	32.3 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2018

After · 17 Sept 2018

Before After

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 · 172Every 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

All fires in Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mungwi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2018 and 10 September 2018: 10 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 3,350 hectares (33.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mungwi (3,369 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 172 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.

Where it burned