Bárue fire, 24 August 2025 Bárue
The fire started on 24 August 2025 in Bárue, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,686 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 43th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 84 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Bárue · 2022Bárue · 2016Bárue · 2017Bárue · 2021
- Burnt area
- 6,686ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 24 Aug 2025 – 31 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 24 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 231
- in a single hotspot: 201 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 484MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,076 ha in 2016, 1,184 ha in 2017, 844 ha in 2018, 2,625 ha in 2019, 687 ha in 2020, 1,698 ha in 2021, 3,237 ha in 2022, 1,959 ha in 2023, 958 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,040 ha that had burned before.
- 2,279 ha Bárue fire, September 2022 9,427 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,225 ha Bárue fire, September 2016 11,541 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 918 ha Bárue fire, September 2017 3,467 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 849 ha Bárue fire, September 2021 5,150 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 529 ha Bárue fire, August 2019 8,166 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 277 ha Bárue fire, August 2024 5,017 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Bárue fire, September 2023 5,331 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Bárue where it started6,737 ha reached on 23 Aug1.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Aug | 32.6 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 25 Aug | 32.1 °C | 23 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Aug | 32.4 °C | 21 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 27 Aug | 30.8 °C | 21 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Aug | 29.9 °C | 23 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 29 Aug | 30.8 °C | 26 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Aug | 31.6 °C | 20 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 31 Aug | 32.3 °C | 21 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Sept after | 31.4 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Sept after | 27.0 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Sept after | 30.3 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Sept after | 30.7 °C | 35 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 7 Sept after | 31.0 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 8 Sept after | 30.3 °C | 32 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 9 Sept after | 30.6 °C | 30 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 10 Sept after | 30.0 °C | 39 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 29 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 223 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 114: 7.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 231Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,541 haBárue12 September 2016 · 18 days · 7 km away
- 14,805 haBárue21 August 2026 · 15 days · 17 km away
- 13,764 haBárue9 September 2022 · 16 days · 19 km away
- 14,821 haBárue9 September 2025 · 17 days · 26 km away
- 25,445 haBárue5 September 2016 · 18 days · 27 km away
- 13,314 haBárue11 September 2026 · 18 days · 28 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bárue fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 August 2025 and 31 August 2025: 8 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 6,686 hectares (66.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bárue (6,737 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 25 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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
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
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. 231 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.
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.