How long did the Balama fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 August 2024 and 12 August 2024: 7 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,468 hectares (44.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Balama (4,493 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

MZ · Mozambique · 2024-08-06 → 2024-08-12

Balama fire, 6 August 2024 Balama

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2024, 22:45 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2024 in Balama, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,468 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 42th largest in Cabo Delgado since 2016 (of 120 with a page). Number 74 in Mozambique in 2024, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Balama · 2016 Balama · 2017 Balama · 2023 Balama · 2019

Burnt area: 4,468ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 6 Aug 2024 – 12 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 6 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 152; in a single hotspot: 237 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 291MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug12 Aug

Play back 13 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

6 Aug 8 Aug 10 Aug 12 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

28°high

34km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,176 ha in 2016, 1,253 ha in 2017, 1,324 ha in 2018, 2,333 ha in 2019, 961 ha in 2020, 63 ha in 2021, 188 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,161 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (45 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

Balama where it started

4,493 ha reached on 31 Jul

0.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
6 Aug	28.2 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Aug	27.6 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
8 Aug	27.5 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Aug	27.7 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Aug	27.7 °C	35 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Aug	27.1 °C	36 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Aug	28.3 °C	34 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Aug after	27.9 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Aug after	28.6 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Aug after	28.6 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Aug after	28.3 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Aug after	26.3 °C	46 %	41 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
18 Aug after	28.1 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
19 Aug after	28.0 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Aug after	28.4 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Aug after	28.4 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug after	27.3 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jul 2024

After · 19 Aug 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 4 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak40 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM1058 µg/m³

Optical depth0.98

WHO 15

456789101112131415

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 · 152Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Balama fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 August 2024 and 12 August 2024: 7 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,468 hectares (44.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Balama (4,493 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (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 ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 152 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 (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