Chicualacuala fire, October 2026 Chicualacuala
The fire started on 27 October 2026 in Chicualacuala, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 40th largest in Gaza since 2016 (of 83 with a page). Number 294 in Mozambique in 2026, of 553.
The power measured by the satellite is low (19.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
No detections since 1 Nov 2026, 11:59 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 4,252ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 27 Oct 2026 – 1 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 70
- in a single hotspot: 20 MW
- Danger at start
- 18
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 102MW
- 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 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,260 ha in 2018, 65 ha in 2019, 231 ha in 2023, 496 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,780 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Chicualacuala where it started4,259 ha reached on 27 Oct0.4 %
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Oct | 39.2 °C | 21 % | 34 km/h | 6.4 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 28 Oct | 27.7 °C | 52 % | 59 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 29 Oct | 30.0 °C | 32 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 30 Oct | 29.3 °C | 23 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 31 Oct | 32.0 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 1 Nov | 35.2 °C | 27 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 2 Nov after | 34.0 °C | 32 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
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 25 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 70Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,675 haChicualacualaSeptember 2025 · 4 days · 6 km away
- 4,923 haChicualacuala23 September 2026 · 5 days · 15 km away
- 4,023 haChicualacualaNovember 2017 · 5 days · 22 km away
- 4,581 haChicualacuala14 September 2022 · 7 days · 26 km away
- 4,125 haChicualacualaJanuary 2018 · 6 days · 28 km away
- 3,897 haMapaiJuly 2022 · 5 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chicualacuala fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 October 2026 and 1 November 2026: 6 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 4,252 hectares (42.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Chicualacuala (4,259 ha, 0.4 %).
- Is the Chicualacuala fire still active?
- No fire detections since 1 Nov 2026, 11:59 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 1 November 2026.
- Area: 4,081 → 4,252 ha.
- Page published (4,081 ha).
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. 70 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.