Skip to content
worldfires
en
AO · Angola · →

Namacunde fire, 3 September 2026 Namacunde

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2026, 12:27 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2026 in Namacunde, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,250 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in Cunene since 2016 (of 104 with a page). Number 69 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Namacunde · 2025Namacunde · 2025Namacunde · 2024Namacunde · 2017

Burnt area
17,250ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
3 Sept 2026 – 18 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2026
Heat detections
465
in a single hotspot: 172 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
886MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept18 Sept
18 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2026 · 13 MW · 3 4 Sept 2026 · 1,114 MW · 51 5 Sept 2026 · 759 MW · 55 6 Sept 2026 · 2,250 MW · 62 7 Sept 2026 · 1,527 MW · 119 8 Sept 2026 · 660 MW · 62 11 Sept 2026 · 56 MW · 3 12 Sept 2026 · 399 MW · 41 13 Sept 2026 · 377 MW · 28 18 Sept 2026 · 1,706 MW · 41
3 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 13 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

36°high
50km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,416 ha in 2016, 982 ha in 2017, 3,328 ha in 2018, 762 ha in 2019, 1,531 ha in 2020, 1,952 ha in 2021, 1,828 ha in 2022, 2,032 ha in 2023, 6,755 ha in 2024, 4,542 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,544 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (172 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

  1. Namacunde where it started
    17,322 ha reached on 3 Sept
    1.6 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
3 Sept 34.6 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
4 Sept 32.0 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Sept 29.3 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Sept 32.1 °C 9 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept 35.5 °C 6 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Sept 34.6 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 Sept 30.6 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Sept 32.0 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Sept 33.2 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Sept 34.6 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Sept 34.8 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 50
14 Sept 33.1 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Sept 35.2 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Sept 36.3 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 36.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Sept 35.3 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Sept after 30.9 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Sept after 31.5 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept after 32.5 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Sept after 32.9 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 32.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 35.1 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Sept after 36.9 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
26 Sept after 37.1 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Sept after 37.1 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Sept after 38.3 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2026
After · 25 Sept 2026

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 8 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 71 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak71 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM1072 µg/m³
Optical depth0.77
1234567891011121314151617
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 · 465Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Namacunde fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2026 to 18 September 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2026 to 14 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,250 hectares (172.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Namacunde (17,322 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 50 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.

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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 14 September 2026 → 18 September 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 3 September 2026 to 14 September 2026. 465 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 (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.