How long did the Chicualacuala fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 January 2018 and 22 January 2018: 5 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 4,125 hectares (41.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chicualacuala (2,700 ha, 0.2 %); Mapai (1,434 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 2018-01-18 → 2018-01-22

Chicualacuala fire, January 2018 Chicualacuala, Mapai

Out · last detection 23 Jan 2018, 11:23 UTC

The fire started on 18 January 2018 in Chicualacuala, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,125 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 39th largest in Gaza since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 115 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mapai · 2022 Chicualacuala · 2022 Chicualacuala · 2026 Chicualacuala · 2025

Burnt area: 4,125ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 18 Jan 2018 – 22 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 18 Jan; 2018
Heat detections: 127; in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 186MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jan22 Jan

Play back 23 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jan 19 Jan 20 Jan 21 Jan 22 Jan 23 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

44km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 29 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

Chicualacuala where it started

2,700 ha reached on 18 Jan

0.2 %
Mapai

1,434 ha reached on 19 Jan

0.1 %

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)
18 Jan	35.0 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Jan	32.3 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Jan	35.8 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Jan	34.0 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Jan	33.1 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
23 Jan after	34.3 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
24 Jan after	37.1 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Jan after	34.3 °C	40 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Jan after	32.4 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Jan after	34.9 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
28 Jan after	36.7 °C	35 %	47 km/h	0.3 mm	High 35
29 Jan after	32.1 °C	44 %	41 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jan 2018

After · 29 Jan 2018

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.

Detections table · 127Every 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 Chicualacuala fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 January 2018 and 22 January 2018: 5 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 4,125 hectares (41.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chicualacuala (2,700 ha, 0.2 %); Mapai (1,434 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

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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. 127 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