Skip to content
worldfires
MZ · Mozambique · –

Cheringoma fire, 6 September 2025 Cheringoma

Out · last detection 29 Sept 2025, 11:14 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2025 in Cheringoma, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,776 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 106 in Mozambique in 2025, of 312.

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
5,776ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
6 Sept 2025 – 29 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Sept
2025
Heat detections
155
in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
68MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept29 Sept
29 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2025 · 5 MW · 2 7 Sept 2025 · 35 MW · 5 9 Sept 2025 · 20 MW · 3 11 Sept 2025 · 5 MW · 1 12 Sept 2025 · 17 MW · 2 13 Sept 2025 · 5 MW · 2 14 Sept 2025 · 62 MW · 9 15 Sept 2025 · 64 MW · 7 16 Sept 2025 · 143 MW · 21 17 Sept 2025 · 395 MW · 41 18 Sept 2025 · 221 MW · 10 19 Sept 2025 · 36 MW · 8 20 Sept 2025 · 96 MW · 15 21 Sept 2025 · 23 MW · 4 22 Sept 2025 · 87 MW · 11 23 Sept 2025 · 47 MW · 9 24 Sept 2025 · 8 MW · 1 28 Sept 2025 · 9 MW · 3 29 Sept 2025 · 4 MW · 1
6 Sept 12 Sept 17 Sept 20 Sept 24 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.0 mm on 30 Sept.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 270 ha in 2016, 422 ha in 2018, 454 ha in 2019, 1,629 ha in 2020, 144 ha in 2022, 67 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,704 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (58 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
    5,801 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.8 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.31 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
6 Sept 34.2 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept 33.3 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
8 Sept 32.0 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept 31.8 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.6 mm High 25
10 Sept 31.4 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Sept 32.2 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
12 Sept 33.2 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept 31.3 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Sept 32.3 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Sept 31.5 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
16 Sept 34.5 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Sept 36.9 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept 35.1 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Sept 33.6 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept 30.6 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
21 Sept 30.5 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept 32.1 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Sept 36.9 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept 33.9 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
25 Sept 31.8 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Sept 29.4 °C 48 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm High 28
27 Sept 27.2 °C 54 % 31 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 19
28 Sept 32.2 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Sept 33.5 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
30 Sept after 27.0 °C 66 % 43 km/h 7.0 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2025
After · 6 Oct 2025

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 23 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1042 µg/m³
Optical depth0.70
10 Sept14 Sept18 Sept22 Sept26 Sept
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 · 155Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2025 to 29 September 2025 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2025 to 23 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,776 hectares (57.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cheringoma (5,801 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 September 2025 → 29 September 2025.
  2. Start date: 12 September 2025 → 6 September 2025.

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.

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 12 September 2025 to 23 September 2025. 155 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 2025, 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.