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Nancova fire, 1 September 2021 Nancova

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2021, 12:28 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2021 in Nancova, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,298 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 660 with a page). Number 8 in Angola in 2021, of 126.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nancova · 2021Nancova · 2023

Burnt area
19,298ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
1 Sept 2021 – 30 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Sept
2021
Heat detections
714
in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
311MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept30 Sept
30 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2021 · 424 MW · 22 2 Sept 2021 · 167 MW · 21 3 Sept 2021 · 266 MW · 25 5 Sept 2021 · 110 MW · 9 6 Sept 2021 · 83 MW · 9 7 Sept 2021 · 144 MW · 13 8 Sept 2021 · 82 MW · 13 9 Sept 2021 · 454 MW · 40 10 Sept 2021 · 328 MW · 28 11 Sept 2021 · 48 MW · 8 12 Sept 2021 · 79 MW · 11 13 Sept 2021 · 82 MW · 14 14 Sept 2021 · 287 MW · 16 15 Sept 2021 · 73 MW · 8 16 Sept 2021 · 191 MW · 8 17 Sept 2021 · 97 MW · 12 18 Sept 2021 · 29 MW · 6 19 Sept 2021 · 1,239 MW · 79 20 Sept 2021 · 105 MW · 8 21 Sept 2021 · 45 MW · 4 22 Sept 2021 · 1,222 MW · 63 23 Sept 2021 · 1,107 MW · 68 24 Sept 2021 · 792 MW · 96 25 Sept 2021 · 626 MW · 55 26 Sept 2021 · 501 MW · 28 27 Sept 2021 · 197 MW · 30 28 Sept 2021 · 211 MW · 13 29 Sept 2021 · 19 MW · 2 30 Sept 2021 · 19 MW · 5
1 Sept 7 Sept 12 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept 22 Sept 27 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
54km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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 6 Oct.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 431 ha in 2016, 249 ha in 2017, 6,983 ha in 2018, 269 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (193 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. Nancova where it started
    19,381 ha reached on 1 Sept
    1.9 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
1 Sept 33.0 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
2 Sept 32.5 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Sept 31.6 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Sept 32.5 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 33.9 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Sept 34.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Sept 34.7 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept 35.2 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Sept 34.3 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Sept 32.3 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
11 Sept 30.8 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
12 Sept 30.0 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept 32.3 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Sept 34.1 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept 34.9 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 35.2 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 34.5 °C 11 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Sept 35.2 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Sept 33.6 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Sept 33.9 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept 35.6 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Sept 36.0 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Sept 35.3 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Sept 35.4 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Sept 34.2 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Sept 34.4 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
27 Sept 34.8 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Sept 34.6 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Sept 35.3 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Sept 35.6 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Oct after 33.6 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Oct after 33.3 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Oct after 34.0 °C 10 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Oct after 34.2 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Oct after 32.9 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Oct after 31.7 °C 30 % 46 km/h 1.4 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2021
After · 7 Oct 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 714Every 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 Nancova fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2021 to 30 September 2021 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2021 to 29 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,298 hectares (193.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nancova (19,381 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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: 29 September 2021 → 30 September 2021.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2021 to 29 September 2021. 714 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 2020, 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.