Sioma fire, August 2025 Sioma, Sesheke
The fire started on 26 August 2025 in Sioma, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,079 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Western since 2016 (of 162 with a page). Number 38 in Zambia in 2025, of 271.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Sioma · 2021Sioma · 2022Sioma · 2018Sioma · 2021
- Burnt area
- 11,079ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 26 Aug 2025 – 13 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 285
- in a single hotspot: 153 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 177MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 820 ha in 2016, 130 ha in 2017, 2,407 ha in 2018, 247 ha in 2019, 1,535 ha in 2020, 4,054 ha in 2021, 2,640 ha in 2022, 624 ha in 2023, 241 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,665 ha that had burned before.
- 2,194 ha Sioma fire, September 2021 3,073 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,947 ha Sioma fire, September 2022 5,031 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,521 ha Sioma fire, September 2018 11,042 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,042 ha Sioma fire, September 2021 6,692 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 247 ha Sioma fire, September 2019 3,704 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 241 ha Sioma fire, September 2024 3,219 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Sioma where it started10,652 ha reached on 26 Aug1.2 %
-
513 ha reached on 7 Sept0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 34.1 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 27 Aug | 34.5 °C | 10 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 28 Aug | 33.9 °C | 10 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 29 Aug | 34.0 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 30 Aug | 34.4 °C | 8 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 31 Aug | 34.0 °C | 10 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 1 Sept | 33.8 °C | 7 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 2 Sept | 33.3 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 3 Sept | 31.5 °C | 10 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 4 Sept | 32.9 °C | 9 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 5 Sept | 33.7 °C | 9 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 6 Sept | 35.1 °C | 7 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 7 Sept | 35.3 °C | 7 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Sept | 35.1 °C | 11 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 9 Sept | 35.5 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 10 Sept | 35.2 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 11 Sept | 34.4 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 12 Sept | 34.5 °C | 11 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 13 Sept | 34.9 °C | 11 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 14 Sept after | 35.7 °C | 10 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 15 Sept after | 36.0 °C | 9 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 16 Sept after | 37.4 °C | 8 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 17 Sept after | 36.9 °C | 9 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Sept after | 37.4 °C | 9 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 19 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 12 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 20 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 14 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 21 Sept after | 34.4 °C | 14 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 22 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 23 Sept after | 36.7 °C | 13 % | 35 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.
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 6 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 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 · 285Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sioma fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2025 to 13 September 2025 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2025 to 13 September 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,079 hectares (110.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sioma (10,652 ha, 1.2 %); Sesheke (513 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 2 September 2025 → 26 August 2025.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2025 to 13 September 2025. 285 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.