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Sioma fire, 24 July 2016 Sioma, Sesheke

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2016, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2016 in Sioma, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,299 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 30th largest in Western since 2016 (of 162 with a page). Number 73 in Zambia in 2016, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sioma · 2018Sesheke · 2022Sesheke · 2026Sioma · 2022

Burnt area
6,299ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
24 Jul 2016 – 27 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
24 Jul
2016
Heat detections
151
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
776MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul27 Jul
27 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jul 2016 · 649 MW · 32 25 Jul 2016 · 586 MW · 37 26 Jul 2016 · 1,850 MW · 78 27 Jul 2016 · 20 MW · 4
24 Jul 25 Jul 26 Jul 27 Jul

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
32km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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. Sioma where it started
    3,252 ha reached on 24 Jul
    0.4 %
  2. Sesheke
    3,085 ha reached on 24 Jul
    0.3 %

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.

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)
24 Jul 27.6 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jul 28.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jul 29.0 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Jul 29.6 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Jul after 30.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Jul after 30.6 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Jul after 30.9 °C 7 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Jul after 31.0 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Aug after 30.7 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Aug after 29.8 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Aug after 30.3 °C 8 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Aug after 26.9 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Aug after 28.0 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Aug after 27.3 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2016
After · 3 Aug 2016

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 · 151Every 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 Sioma fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 July 2016 and 27 July 2016: 4 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 6,299 hectares (63.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sioma (3,252 ha, 0.4 %); Sesheke (3,085 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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 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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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. 151 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.

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.