Burned area
satellite only6,389ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2022 – 19 Aug 2022
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AO · Angola · –
Mussende fire, 31 July 2022 Mussende
Out · last detection 19 Aug 2022, 13:14 UTC
The fire started on 31 July 2022 in Mussende, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,389 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 16th largest in Cuanza Sul since 2016 (of 37 with a page). Number 77 in Angola in 2022, of 143.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-05matches 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 only20days
31 Jul 2022 to 19 Aug 2022: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 19 Aug 2022, 13:14 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 only31 Jul 2022
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 31 Jul 2022
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only292
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 106 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2022 – 19 Aug 2022
+− 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 only1,448MW
Total radiative power on 9 August 2022; hotspots that day: 75.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 9 Aug 2022
+− 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
model37.2FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2022, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− 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
model31.2°C · 15% RH
High of 31.2 °C and minimum humidity of 15% on 19 August 2022; gusts of 43 km/h on 6 August 2022.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 31 Jul 2022 – 19 Aug 2022
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− 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 24 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
-
logStart date: 6 August 2022 → 31 July 2022.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 13 August 2022 → 19 August 2022.
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/mussende-2022-07?v=2026-11-05A 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 mussende-2022-07.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-07-31 | 1 | 13 | 29.3 | 15 | 21 | 15.5 | 30.2 | 0 | 37.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-01 | 2 | 12 | 28.5 | 14.2 | 27 | 12.4 | 29.2 | 0 | 35.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-02 | 0 | 0 | 27.5 | 13.8 | 35 | 12.1 | 30.2 | 0 | 33.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-03 | 0 | 0 | 26.2 | 14.6 | 38 | 9.3 | 23.8 | 0 | 28.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-04 | 2 | 16 | 28.1 | 15.6 | 37 | 9.9 | 28.4 | 0 | 28.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-05 | 2 | 24 | 30.1 | 17.8 | 25 | 16.5 | 41.4 | 0 | 44.7 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-06 | 39 | 433 | 28.8 | 15.1 | 20 | 17.1 | 43.2 | 0 | 53.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-07 | 38 | 557 | 29.6 | 16.2 | 19 | 14.7 | 39.6 | 0 | 50 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-08 | 47 | 695 | 29.4 | 17.3 | 17 | 13.9 | 38.2 | 0 | 46 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-09 | 75 | 1,448 | 30.1 | 15.2 | 17 | 14.8 | 40 | 0 | 50.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-10 | 39 | 228 | 30.6 | 14.5 | 16 | 12.6 | 34.9 | 0 | 48.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-11 | 27 | 313 | 30.2 | 14.2 | 14 | 15.5 | 42.1 | 0 | 59.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-12 | 2 | 12 | 30.3 | 14.8 | 13 | 17 | 43.2 | 0 | 64.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-13 | 2 | 4 | 28.9 | 12.8 | 19 | 14.1 | 28.4 | 0 | 45.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-14 | 11 | 111 | 30.7 | 14.8 | 15 | 11.8 | 25.6 | 0 | 47.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-15 | 1 | 11 | 29.8 | 14.4 | 21 | 10.2 | 29.5 | 0 | 46.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-16 | 1 | 4 | 29.5 | 13.9 | 21 | 12.7 | 35.3 | 0 | 51.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-17 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 14.5 | 29 | 12.6 | 26.6 | 0 | 39.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-18 | 1 | 3 | 30.8 | 15.4 | 22 | 15.1 | 29.2 | 0 | 41.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-19 | 2 | 8 | 31.2 | 16 | 15 | 13 | 38.5 | 0 | 55.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-20 | 0 | 0 | 30.1 | 13.9 | 17 | 15.1 | 40 | 0 | 59.4 | extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-21 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 13.7 | 19 | 13.9 | 39.6 | 0 | 53.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-22 | 0 | 0 | 30.4 | 14.7 | 18 | 11.9 | 33.1 | 0 | 53.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-23 | 0 | 0 | 28.8 | 15.3 | 23 | 14.8 | 40.7 | 0 | 55.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-24 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 16.4 | 24 | 13.1 | 34.9 | 0 | 51.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-25 | 0 | 0 | 29.9 | 14.9 | 24 | 12.5 | 27.4 | 0 | 39.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-26 | 0 | 0 | 28.8 | 16.3 | 27 | 16.5 | 34.9 | 0 | 35.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-27 | 0 | 0 | 29.5 | 17.2 | 28 | 11.1 | 28.1 | 0 | 41 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-28 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 15 | 37 | 12.1 | 28.4 | 0 | 35.6 | alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-29 | 0 | 0 | 27.6 | 17.8 | 39 | 9.4 | 24.5 | 0.4 | 32.3 | 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), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 6,389ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 20days
- 31 Jul 2022 – 19 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 31 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 292
- in a single hotspot: 106 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 229MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
31 Jul19 Aug
19 Aug 2022
How it evolved, day by day
31 Jul
6 Aug
9 Aug
14 Aug
19 Aug
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
43km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 307 ha in 2016, 1,374 ha in 2017, 631 ha in 2018, 2,253 ha in 2019, 542 ha in 2020, 722 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,192 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Mussende where it started6,430 ha reached on 31 Jul0.6 %
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)
Started with 60 days without rain: 84 % of the area in Angola
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Jul | 29.3 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Aug | 28.5 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 2 Aug | 27.5 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Aug | 26.2 °C | 38 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 4 Aug | 28.1 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 5 Aug | 30.1 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 6 Aug | 28.8 °C | 20 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 7 Aug | 29.6 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 8 Aug | 29.4 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 9 Aug | 30.1 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 10 Aug | 30.6 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 11 Aug | 30.2 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 12 Aug | 30.3 °C | 13 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 13 Aug | 28.9 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 14 Aug | 30.7 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 15 Aug | 29.8 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 16 Aug | 29.5 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 17 Aug | 29.0 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 18 Aug | 30.8 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 19 Aug | 31.2 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 20 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 22 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 18 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 23 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 24 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 26 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 28 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 39 % | 24 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 32 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 37.2, a minimum humidity of 21% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 20.
FWI at the start
37.2
Minimum humidity
21 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Mussende fire, 31 July 2022
6,389 ha
20 days
FWI 37.2
Min. humidity 21 %
Mussende fire, July 2025
8,347 ha
22 days
FWI 37.4
Min. humidity 25 %
17 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Quibala fire, July 2025
20,503 ha
25 days
FWI 35.1
Min. humidity 23 %
78 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Cela (Waku Kungo) fire, July 2025
5,157 ha
14 days
FWI 38.8
Min. humidity 19 %
118 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Mussende fire, July 2025
8,194 ha
10 days
FWI 37.6
Min. humidity 25 %
89 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Cela (Waku Kungo) fire, July 2025
7,064 ha
22 days
FWI 42.0
Min. humidity 22 %
104 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 20 days
- median duration
- 6,079 ha
- median area
- 20 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- —
- rain at the end (median; 0 of 20 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (6,389 ha against a median of 6,079 ha) and lasted 20 days, against 20 days.
In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
43km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 19 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. None of its 20 twins had rain when they ended.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 24 Jul 2022
After · 26 Aug 2022
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 7 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 347 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 140: 9.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak347 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM10496 µg/m³
Optical depth1.65
WHO 15
4 Aug8 Aug12 Aug16 Aug20 Aug
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 · 292Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mussende fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 July 2022 to 19 August 2022 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 August 2022 to 13 August 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,389 hectares (63.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mussende (6,430 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 20. Their median duration was 20 days and their median area 6,079 ha; 20 % went past 10,000 ha. In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.
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.
- Start date: 6 August 2022 → 31 July 2022.
- Last day with fire: 13 August 2022 → 19 August 2022.
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 6 August 2022 to 13 August 2022. 292 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.
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 (Public Domain). 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.