Mwinilunga fire, 17 September 2025 Mwinilunga, Mufumbwe
The fire started on 17 September 2025 in Mwinilunga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,509 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 20th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 286 with a page). Number 40 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 10,509ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 17 Sept 2025 – 22 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 17 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 185
- in a single hotspot: 146 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 641MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 29 Sept.
This area had burned before
84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 49 ha in 2016, 924 ha in 2017, 1,949 ha in 2019, 1,643 ha in 2020, 3,061 ha in 2021, 1,094 ha in 2022, 832 ha in 2023, 6,830 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,874 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
-
Mwinilunga where it started10,502 ha reached on 17 Sept0.6 %
-
105 ha reached on 19 Sept0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Sept | 36.1 °C | 8 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 18 Sept | 36.0 °C | 10 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 19 Sept | 34.2 °C | 12 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 20 Sept | 34.8 °C | 19 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 21 Sept | 33.6 °C | 16 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 22 Sept | 34.8 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 23 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Sept after | 36.4 °C | 9 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 25 Sept after | 34.7 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 26 Sept after | 34.9 °C | 12 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 27 Sept after | 35.3 °C | 14 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 28 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 29 Sept after | 30.2 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 1.4 mm | High 25 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 25 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 185Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 15,477 haMwinilunga17 August 2024 · 5 days · 4 km away
- 4,686 haMwinilunga23 September 2019 · 7 days · 13 km away
- 6,858 haKalumbila20 September 2025 · 7 days · 16 km away
- 5,448 haMufumbwe28 June 2026 · 13 days · 23 km away
- 19,476 haKalumbilaSeptember 2017 · 14 days · 27 km away
- 8,352 haMufumbwe18 July 2026 · 12 days · 28 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mwinilunga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2025 and 22 September 2025: 6 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 10,509 hectares (105.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mwinilunga (10,502 ha, 0.6 %); Mufumbwe (105 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class 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
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 185 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 (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.