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Cheringoma fire, 13 October 2017 Cheringoma, Muanza

Out · last detection 27 Oct 2017, 12:14 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2017 in Cheringoma, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,433 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 26th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 21 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cheringoma · 2016Muanza · 2016Muanza · 2026Muanza · 2016

Burnt area
11,433ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
13 Oct 2017 – 27 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
13 Oct
2017
Heat detections
578
in a single hotspot: 144 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
705MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct27 Oct
27 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 2017 · 2 MW · 1 14 Oct 2017 · 8 MW · 2 15 Oct 2017 · 27 MW · 3 16 Oct 2017 · 369 MW · 26 17 Oct 2017 · 1,025 MW · 81 20 Oct 2017 · 56 MW · 8 22 Oct 2017 · 64 MW · 6 23 Oct 2017 · 68 MW · 2 24 Oct 2017 · 765 MW · 36 25 Oct 2017 · 1,181 MW · 76 26 Oct 2017 · 4,395 MW · 278 27 Oct 2017 · 505 MW · 59
13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 22 Oct 24 Oct 26 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
60km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.9 mm on 28 Oct.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,690 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.2% of the area of London (114 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. Cheringoma where it started
    9,273 ha reached on 13 Oct
    1.3 %
  2. Muanza
    2,228 ha reached on 16 Oct
    0.3 %

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 2015
Built-up area2.2 ha
Residents≈ 550

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.2 hectares of built-up land and about 550 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
13 Oct 27.9 °C 50 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
14 Oct 25.1 °C 56 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
15 Oct 31.4 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Oct 37.6 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Oct 41.6 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Oct 27.1 °C 62 % 60 km/h 0.6 mm High 29
19 Oct 31.3 °C 53 % 29 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 16
20 Oct 34.9 °C 49 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
21 Oct 33.5 °C 52 % 46 km/h 0.9 mm High 23
22 Oct 31.5 °C 51 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
23 Oct 31.9 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
24 Oct 34.1 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Oct 36.5 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Oct 40.0 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Oct 37.1 °C 35 % 52 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 40
28 Oct after 24.9 °C 87 % 49 km/h 9.9 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2017
After · 3 Nov 2017

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 · 578Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cheringoma fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 October 2017 and 27 October 2017: 15 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 11,433 hectares (114.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cheringoma (9,273 ha, 1.3 %); Muanza (2,228 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 578 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 2015, 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 (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.