Mwinilunga fire, 12 August 2026 Mwinilunga
The fire started on 12 August 2026 in Mwinilunga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,507 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 106th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 286 with a page). Number 275 in Zambia in 2026, of 610.
The power measured by the satellite is low (29.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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Suggestions: Mwinilunga · 2026Mwinilunga · 2026
- Burnt area
- 4,507ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 12 Aug 2026 – 24 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 12 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 135
- in a single hotspot: 29 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 80MW
- 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: 2.4 mm on 5 Sept.
This area had burned before
70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 688 ha in 2016, 1,398 ha in 2018, 1,455 ha in 2022, 849 ha in 2023, 1,257 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,153 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 started4,530 ha reached on 6 Aug0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Aug | 27.9 °C | 21 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 6 Aug | 28.1 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 7 Aug | 29.0 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 Aug | 28.6 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Aug | 28.8 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Aug | 29.8 °C | 23 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 11 Aug | 29.5 °C | 27 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 12 Aug | 29.9 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Aug | 28.1 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Aug | 28.5 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Aug | 26.9 °C | 24 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Aug | 27.1 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 17 Aug | 28.0 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 18 Aug | 29.1 °C | 13 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 19 Aug | 29.0 °C | 14 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 20 Aug | 29.0 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Aug | 29.7 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 22 Aug | 30.4 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 Aug | 30.1 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 24 Aug | 30.5 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 25 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 26 Aug after | 30.8 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 27 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 20 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 29 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 30 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 31 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 1 Sept after | 32.5 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 2 Sept after | 30.9 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 3 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 4 Sept after | 30.3 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 28 |
| 5 Sept after | 22.8 °C | 60 % | 40 km/h | 2.4 mm | Low 6 |
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 21 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 117 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 75: 5.0 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 · 135Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mwinilunga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 August 2026 and 24 August 2026: 13 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 4,507 hectares (45.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mwinilunga (4,530 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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
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.
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. 135 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.