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Sesheke fire, September 2022 Sesheke, Mulobezi

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2022, 12:28 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2022 in Sesheke, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,481 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Western since 2016 (of 162 with a page). Number 31 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mulobezi · 2018Sesheke · 2017Sesheke · 2019

Burnt area
10,481ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
4 Sept 2022 – 17 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
4 Sept
2022
Heat detections
471
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
413MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2022 · 23 MW · 5 5 Sept 2022 · 311 MW · 23 6 Sept 2022 · 1,142 MW · 82 7 Sept 2022 · 1,321 MW · 63 8 Sept 2022 · 263 MW · 34 9 Sept 2022 · 189 MW · 27 10 Sept 2022 · 91 MW · 12 11 Sept 2022 · 395 MW · 48 12 Sept 2022 · 855 MW · 78 13 Sept 2022 · 1,021 MW · 77 14 Sept 2022 · 32 MW · 4 15 Sept 2022 · 58 MW · 6 16 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 3 17 Sept 2022 · 70 MW · 9
4 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept 16 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

34°high
53km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,074 ha in 2016, 618 ha in 2017, 393 ha in 2018, 395 ha in 2019, 417 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,437 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (105 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. Sesheke where it started
    7,576 ha reached on 4 Sept
    0.6 %
  2. Mulobezi
    2,947 ha reached on 11 Sept
    0.2 %

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.

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)
4 Sept 31.2 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 33.3 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept 34.1 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept 31.5 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Sept 30.3 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Sept 31.0 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Sept 31.6 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept 32.9 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Sept 33.2 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Sept 32.5 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Sept 30.5 °C 22 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Sept 28.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 29.9 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Sept 31.4 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept after 32.8 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Sept after 34.0 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept after 32.2 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept after 32.5 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept after 33.7 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Sept after 35.0 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 33.7 °C 18 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Sept after 33.1 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Sept after 34.1 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Sept after 35.7 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2022
After · 24 Sept 2022

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 12 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1083 µg/m³
Optical depth1.14
234567891011121314151617181920
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 · 471Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sesheke fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 September 2022 to 17 September 2022 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2022 to 14 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,481 hectares (104.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sesheke (7,576 ha, 0.6 %); Mulobezi (2,947 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 14 September 2022 → 17 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 6 September 2022 → 4 September 2022.

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 6 September 2022 to 14 September 2022. 471 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 (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.