How long did the Nakonde fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 August 2026 and 22 August 2026: 7 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 3,746 hectares (37.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Nakonde (3,767 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.

ZM · Zambia · 2026-08-16 → 2026-08-22

Nakonde fire, August 2026 Nakonde

Out · last detection 22 Aug 2026, 10:53 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2026 in Nakonde, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,746 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 362th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 517 with a page). Number 393 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nakonde · 2026 Nakonde · 2026

Burnt area: 3,746ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 16 Aug 2026 – 22 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 16 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 72; in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 91MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug22 Aug

Play back 22 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

17 Aug 19 Aug 20 Aug 21 Aug 22 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

30°high

51km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 586 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (37 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

Nakonde where it started

3,767 ha reached on 12 Aug

0.8 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area6.3 ha

Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.3 hectares of built-up land and about 500 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
12 Aug	29.7 °C	17 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
13 Aug	27.5 °C	34 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Aug	23.7 °C	46 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Aug	23.5 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Aug	26.3 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Aug	27.3 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Aug	27.3 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Aug	27.7 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Aug	27.5 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Aug	27.9 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Aug	28.3 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 Aug after	27.3 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
24 Aug after	28.8 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Aug after	29.4 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Aug after	30.4 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Aug after	29.0 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
28 Aug after	28.5 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Aug after	28.0 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Aug after	29.2 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
31 Aug after	30.8 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
1 Sept after	29.8 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept after	31.1 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
3 Sept after	31.1 °C	23 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
4 Sept after	31.9 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
5 Sept after	32.9 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Sept after	31.2 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
7 Sept after	30.0 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
8 Sept after	27.1 °C	37 %	49 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 · 9 Aug 2026

After · 29 Aug 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 23 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM1042 µg/m³

Optical depth0.85

WHO 15

101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311

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 · 72Every 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 Nakonde fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 August 2026 and 22 August 2026: 7 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 3,746 hectares (37.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Nakonde (3,767 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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?

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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. 72 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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