How long did the Gorongosa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2018 to 16 September 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2018 to 9 September 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,856 hectares (48.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gorongosa (4,882 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2018-08-31 → 2018-09-16

Gorongosa fire, 31 August 2018 Gorongosa

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2018, 10:40 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2018 in Gorongosa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,856 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 91th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 80 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gorongosa · 2016 Gorongosa · 2026 Gorongosa · 2022 Gorongosa · 2025

Burnt area: 4,856ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 31 Aug 2018 – 16 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 31 Aug; 2018
Heat detections: 222; in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 134MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug16 Sept

Play back 17 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 3 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 16 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

35°high

49km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 878 ha in 2016, 351 ha in 2017.

878 ha Gorongosa fire, August 2016 5,384 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (49 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

Gorongosa where it started

4,882 ha reached on 31 Aug

0.7 %

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)
2 Sept	30.4 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Sept	33.5 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
4 Sept	34.1 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 Sept	33.7 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
6 Sept	33.9 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
7 Sept	33.5 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
8 Sept	34.8 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
9 Sept	32.8 °C	31 %	49 km/h	4.1 mm	High 22
10 Sept	25.1 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
11 Sept	27.2 °C	34 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Sept	29.1 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
13 Sept	31.8 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Sept	32.8 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Sept	33.6 °C	24 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Sept	33.4 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Sept after	33.8 °C	24 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
18 Sept after	35.6 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
19 Sept after	35.7 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Aug 2018

After · 23 Sept 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 · 222Every 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 Gorongosa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2018 to 16 September 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2018 to 9 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,856 hectares (48.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gorongosa (4,882 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 September 2018 → 16 September 2018.
26 October 2026 Start date: 2 September 2018 → 31 August 2018.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 2 September 2018 to 9 September 2018. 222 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