How long did the Guro fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 October 2020 and 20 October 2020: 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 3,104 hectares (31.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Guro (3,122 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2020-10-16 → 2020-10-20

Guro fire, October 2020 Guro

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2020, 22:46 UTC

The fire started on 16 October 2020 in Guro, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,104 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 179th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 184 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guro · 2016 Guro · 2026 Guro · 2024 Guro · 2026

Burnt area: 3,104ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 16 Oct 2020 – 20 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 16 Oct; 2020
Heat detections: 110; in a single hotspot: 94 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 315MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Oct20 Oct

Play back 21 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

16 Oct 17 Oct 18 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 21 Oct

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

44km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,548 ha in 2016, 8 ha in 2017.

1,548 ha Guro fire, October 2016 3,088 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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

Guro where it started

3,122 ha reached on 16 Oct

0.4 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
16 Oct	32.4 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Oct	32.6 °C	23 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Oct	34.5 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Oct	35.0 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
20 Oct	37.1 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
21 Oct after	36.5 °C	29 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
22 Oct after	34.1 °C	24 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
23 Oct after	33.5 °C	26 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
24 Oct after	34.4 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
25 Oct after	34.8 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
26 Oct after	34.9 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 49
27 Oct after	35.3 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
28 Oct after	35.8 °C	24 %	47 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 52
29 Oct after	36.6 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
30 Oct after	36.6 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Oct 2020

After · 27 Oct 2020

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 · 110Every 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 Guro fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 October 2020 and 20 October 2020: 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 3,104 hectares (31.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Guro (3,122 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 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 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. 110 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