Gorongosa fire, October 2023 Gorongosa
The fire started on 5 October 2023 in Gorongosa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,598 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 24th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 13 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 11,598ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 5 Oct 2023 – 14 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 5 Oct
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 495
- in a single hotspot: 38 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 291MW
- 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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 15 Oct.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,407 ha in 2017, 5,245 ha in 2018, 4,239 ha in 2019, 2,310 ha in 2020, 4,253 ha in 2021, 8,020 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,038 ha that had burned before.
- 7,519 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2022 16,281 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,158 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2021 3,913 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,310 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2020 4,833 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,174 ha Gorongosa fire, October 2018 3,673 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 953 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2018 9,955 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 941 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2019 3,683 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 863 ha Gorongosa fire, September 2019 3,520 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Gorongosa where it started11,678 ha reached on 30 Sept1.7 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Sept | 36.3 °C | 36 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 1 Oct | 40.7 °C | 19 % | 46 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Oct | 25.1 °C | 63 % | 48 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 23 |
| 3 Oct | 28.8 °C | 37 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 4 Oct | 31.2 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 5 Oct | 34.4 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Oct | 35.9 °C | 30 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Oct | 37.6 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 8 Oct | 39.2 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 9 Oct | 33.7 °C | 41 % | 32 km/h | 1.9 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 10 Oct | 34.2 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 11 Oct | 34.1 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 12 Oct | 37.7 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Oct | 41.8 °C | 20 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Oct | 37.2 °C | 31 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 15 Oct after | 26.3 °C | 75 % | 40 km/h | 1.5 mm | Low 10 |
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 4 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily 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 · 495Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,281 haGorongosa27 September 2022 · 13 days · 3 km away
- 60,863 haGorongosa30 August 2026 · 31 days · 6 km away
- 19,369 haGorongosa29 September 2022 · 16 days · 25 km away
- 11,928 haGorongosa8 September 2016 · 17 days · 30 km away
- 22,610 haGorongosa24 September 2021 · 9 days · 31 km away
- 13,157 haGorongosa1 September 2023 · 12 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Gorongosa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 October 2023 and 14 October 2023: 10 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 11,598 hectares (116.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Gorongosa (11,678 ha, 1.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
- 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.
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. 495 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.
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.