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AO · Angola · –

Xá-Muteba fire, 30 May 2026 Xá-Muteba, Quela

Out · last detection 22 Jun 2026, 13:18 UTC

The fire started on 30 May 2026 in Xá-Muteba, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,167 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 337 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
6,167ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
30 May 2026 – 22 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
30 May
2026
Heat detections
134
in a single hotspot: 171 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
103MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 May22 Jun
22 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

30 May 2026 · 13 MW · 2 31 May 2026 · 49 MW · 6 3 Jun 2026 · 0 MW · 0 5 Jun 2026 · 10 MW · 5 6 Jun 2026 · 27 MW · 4 7 Jun 2026 · 23 MW · 5 8 Jun 2026 · 54 MW · 8 9 Jun 2026 · 72 MW · 7 10 Jun 2026 · 63 MW · 3 11 Jun 2026 · 85 MW · 10 12 Jun 2026 · 378 MW · 30 13 Jun 2026 · 166 MW · 18 14 Jun 2026 · 27 MW · 6 15 Jun 2026 · 5 MW · 2 16 Jun 2026 · 10 MW · 1 17 Jun 2026 · 29 MW · 1 19 Jun 2026 · 5 MW · 2 20 Jun 2026 · 3 MW · 1 21 Jun 2026 · 236 MW · 12 22 Jun 2026 · 702 MW · 11
30 May 6 Jun 10 Jun 14 Jun 19 Jun 22 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
31km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 403 ha in 2016, 1,150 ha in 2017, 1,461 ha in 2018, 629 ha in 2019, 749 ha in 2020, 568 ha in 2022, 1,136 ha in 2023, 261 ha in 2024, 278 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,011 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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
    5,092 ha reached on 30 May
    0.4 %
  2. 1,107 ha reached on 3 Jun
    0.2 %

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)
30 May 33.4 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 May 33.1 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Jun 32.7 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Jun 33.1 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Jun 33.2 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Jun 32.4 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Jun 32.5 °C 24 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Jun 33.6 °C 26 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Jun 34.3 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Jun 33.9 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Jun 34.0 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Jun 34.1 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Jun 34.2 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Jun 33.6 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Jun 32.3 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jun 32.6 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jun 32.1 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Jun 32.7 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jun 32.1 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Jun 30.1 °C 45 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Jun 31.4 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
20 Jun 33.6 °C 36 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Jun 33.6 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Jun 32.0 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Jun after 31.6 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Jun after 33.4 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jun after 33.0 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Jun after 32.4 °C 27 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Jun after 32.4 °C 29 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jun after 31.1 °C 38 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Jun after 32.1 °C 36 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
30 Jun after 33.0 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Jul after 32.9 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Jul after 32.7 °C 30 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 May 2026
After · 29 Jun 2026

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 15 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 67: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10117 µg/m³
Optical depth0.99
4 Jun7 Jun10 Jun13 Jun16 Jun
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 · 134Every 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 30 May 2026 to 22 June 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 June 2026 to 15 June 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,167 hectares (61.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Xá-Muteba (5,092 ha, 0.4 %); Quela (1,107 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 5 June 2026 → 30 May 2026.
  2. Last day with fire: 15 June 2026 → 22 June 2026.
  3. Start date: 6 June 2026 → 5 June 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 6 June 2026 to 15 June 2026. 134 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.