Skip to content
worldfires
en
AO · Angola · →

Xá-Muteba fire, June 2023 Xá-Muteba

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2023, 13:15 UTC

The fire started on 26 June 2023 in Xá-Muteba, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,611 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 146th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 58 in Angola in 2023, of 158.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
7,611ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
26 Jun 2023 – 21 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
26 Jun
2023
Heat detections
315
in a single hotspot: 195 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
300MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jun21 Jul
21 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jun 2023 · 6 MW · 1 28 Jun 2023 · 121 MW · 5 1 Jul 2023 · 4 MW · 1 2 Jul 2023 · 98 MW · 14 3 Jul 2023 · 2,218 MW · 81 4 Jul 2023 · 109 MW · 12 5 Jul 2023 · 565 MW · 25 7 Jul 2023 · 61 MW · 5 8 Jul 2023 · 415 MW · 31 9 Jul 2023 · 45 MW · 8 10 Jul 2023 · 490 MW · 17 11 Jul 2023 · 79 MW · 14 12 Jul 2023 · 121 MW · 14 13 Jul 2023 · 72 MW · 8 14 Jul 2023 · 451 MW · 14 15 Jul 2023 · 581 MW · 21 16 Jul 2023 · 527 MW · 11 17 Jul 2023 · 43 MW · 7 18 Jul 2023 · 53 MW · 6 19 Jul 2023 · 190 MW · 15 21 Jul 2023 · 46 MW · 5
27 Jun 2 Jul 3 Jul 5 Jul 9 Jul 12 Jul 15 Jul 18 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

33°high
49km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,790 ha in 2016, 2,417 ha in 2017, 1,586 ha in 2018, 297 ha in 2019, 1,894 ha in 2020, 1,947 ha in 2021, 856 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,434 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (76 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
    7,662 ha reached on 27 Jun
    0.5 %

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)
1 Jul 31.7 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Jul 32.4 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Jul 31.4 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jul 30.9 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
5 Jul 31.7 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Jul 31.3 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Jul 32.0 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Jul 31.1 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Jul 31.5 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Jul 32.1 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Jul 29.8 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jul 29.6 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jul 31.5 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Jul 33.4 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jul 33.4 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul 33.4 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Jul 33.2 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Jul 33.2 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Jul 33.1 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Jul 32.7 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Jul 31.7 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Jul after 33.0 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul after 33.9 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jul after 32.7 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Jul after 32.4 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jun 2023
After · 28 Jul 2023

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 4 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 126 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak126 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10180 µg/m³
Optical depth1.11
2930123456789101112131415161718
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 · 315Every 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 26 June 2023 to 21 July 2023 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2023 to 15 July 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,611 hectares (76.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Xá-Muteba (7,662 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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: 15 July 2023 → 21 July 2023.
  2. Start date: 1 July 2023 → 26 June 2023.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 1 July 2023 to 15 July 2023. 315 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 (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.