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Xá-Muteba fire, 25 May 2019 Xá-Muteba

Out · last detection 16 Jun 2019, 23:29 UTC

The fire started on 25 May 2019 in Xá-Muteba, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,727 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 44th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 28 in Angola in 2019, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Xá-Muteba · 2016Xá-Muteba · 2016Xá-Muteba · 2026Xá-Muteba · 2026

Burnt area
13,727ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
25 May 2019 – 16 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 May
2019
Heat detections
639
in a single hotspot: 293 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
377MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 May16 Jun
16 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 May 2019 · 265 MW · 29 26 May 2019 · 32 MW · 8 27 May 2019 · 23 MW · 3 28 May 2019 · 171 MW · 9 29 May 2019 · 16 MW · 7 30 May 2019 · 81 MW · 9 31 May 2019 · 161 MW · 16 1 Jun 2019 · 1,186 MW · 27 2 Jun 2019 · 1,491 MW · 82 3 Jun 2019 · 872 MW · 119 4 Jun 2019 · 952 MW · 90 5 Jun 2019 · 1,236 MW · 60 6 Jun 2019 · 201 MW · 23 7 Jun 2019 · 373 MW · 19 8 Jun 2019 · 143 MW · 31 9 Jun 2019 · 124 MW · 22 10 Jun 2019 · 125 MW · 7 11 Jun 2019 · 1,123 MW · 56 12 Jun 2019 · 23 MW · 2 13 Jun 2019 · 10 MW · 3 14 Jun 2019 · 8 MW · 2 15 Jun 2019 · 17 MW · 5 16 Jun 2019 · 36 MW · 10
25 May 29 May 2 Jun 6 Jun 10 Jun 14 Jun

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
49km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,088 ha in 2016, 5,610 ha in 2017, 5,967 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,084 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (137 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. Xá-Muteba where it started
    13,811 ha reached on 25 May
    1.0 %

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.

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)
25 May 32.5 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 May 32.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 May 31.7 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 May 32.3 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 May 30.5 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
30 May 32.2 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
31 May 32.6 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Jun 32.0 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
2 Jun 33.7 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jun 31.5 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Jun 30.0 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jun 30.6 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jun 31.0 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Jun 32.2 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Jun 32.6 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jun 33.0 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jun 31.7 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Jun 30.8 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Jun 30.8 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Jun 31.4 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Jun 31.9 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Jun 31.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Jun 30.7 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Jun after 31.6 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jun after 31.6 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jun after 31.0 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jun after 31.6 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jun after 31.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Jun after 31.0 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jun after 30.4 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jun after 31.5 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jun after 31.5 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jun after 32.5 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 May 2019
After · 23 Jun 2019

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 · 639Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Xá-Muteba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 May 2019 to 16 June 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 May 2019 to 9 June 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,727 hectares (137.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Xá-Muteba (13,811 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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: 9 June 2019 → 16 June 2019.
  2. Start date: 30 May 2019 → 25 May 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 30 May 2019 to 9 June 2019. 639 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 (Public Domain). 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.