How long did the Umguza fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2019 to 30 September 2019 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2019 to 23 September 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,329 hectares (103.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Umguza (10,362 ha, 1.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

ZW · Zimbabwe · 2019-09-19 → 2019-09-30

Umguza fire, 19 September 2019 Umguza

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2019, 12:14 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2019 in Umguza, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,329 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 22th largest in Matabeleland North since 2016 (of 489 with a page). Number 8 in Zimbabwe in 2019, of 282.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Umguza · 2016 Umguza · 2021 Umguza · 2019 Umguza · 2017

Burnt area: 10,329ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 19 Sept 2019 – 30 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 19 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 379; in a single hotspot: 156 MW
Danger at start: 66; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 840MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept30 Sept

Play back 1 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 20 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 27 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct

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

63km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 10 Oct.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,212 ha in 2016.

2,212 ha Umguza fire, July 2016 2,501 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 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

Umguza where it started

10,362 ha reached on 19 Sept

1.7 %

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 area2.0 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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)
19 Sept	32.9 °C	6 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
20 Sept	33.0 °C	7 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
21 Sept	32.8 °C	7 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
22 Sept	33.9 °C	11 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
23 Sept	36.1 °C	11 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 70
24 Sept	30.4 °C	28 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
25 Sept	20.6 °C	50 %	63 km/h	3.2 mm	Low 11
26 Sept	20.6 °C	28 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Sept	26.0 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Sept	30.5 °C	9 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
29 Sept	32.1 °C	8 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Sept	35.1 °C	8 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
1 Oct after	31.1 °C	17 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
2 Oct after	24.5 °C	40 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Oct after	30.5 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Oct after	32.4 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Oct after	35.4 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
6 Oct after	34.0 °C	8 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
7 Oct after	34.1 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
8 Oct after	34.6 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 51
9 Oct after	35.8 °C	18 %	46 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 55
10 Oct after	35.1 °C	22 %	58 km/h	1.1 mm	Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Sept 2019

After · 7 Oct 2019

Before After

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 · 379Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Zimbabwe ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Umguza fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2019 to 30 September 2019 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2019 to 23 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,329 hectares (103.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Umguza (10,362 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 23 September 2019 → 30 September 2019.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 September 2019 to 23 September 2019. 379 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.

Where it burned