Ngabwe fire, 28 October 2025 Ngabwe
The fire started on 28 October 2025 in Ngabwe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,929 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 247th largest in Central since 2016 (of 401 with a page). Number 157 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,929ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 28 Oct 2025 – 5 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 28 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 114
- in a single hotspot: 203 MW
- Danger at start
- 50
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 234MW
- 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: 4.8 mm on 6 Nov.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Ngabwe where it started3,956 ha reached on 28 Oct0.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Oct | 36.2 °C | 21 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 29 Oct | 35.7 °C | 23 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 30 Oct | 35.3 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 31 Oct | 35.0 °C | 21 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 1 Nov | 35.5 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Nov | 36.9 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Nov | 36.7 °C | 17 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 4 Nov | 33.7 °C | 29 % | 55 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 5 Nov | 34.7 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 49 |
| 6 Nov after | 26.2 °C | 47 % | 37 km/h | 4.8 mm | Low 5 |
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 26 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 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 · 114Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,745 haNgabwe12 October 2025 · 10 days · 7 km away
- 6,083 haChibomboOctober 2020 · 7 days · 20 km away
- 4,682 haChibomboAugust 2019 · 3 days · 21 km away
- 4,622 haChibomboOctober 2024 · 6 days · 21 km away
- 6,810 haChibombo17 August 2025 · 23 days · 22 km away
- 4,816 haNgabwe30 July 2026 · 3 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ngabwe fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 October 2025 and 5 November 2025: 9 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 3,929 hectares (39.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ngabwe (3,956 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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. 114 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.