Gurué fire, July 2024 Gurué
The fire started on 27 July 2024 in Gurué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,402 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 663th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 122 in Mozambique in 2024, of 150.
The power measured by the satellite is low (24.5 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…
Suggestions: Gurué · 2016Gurué · 2020Gurué · 2019Gurué · 2022
- Burnt area
- 3,402ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 27 Jul 2024 – 31 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 40
- in a single hotspot: 24 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 64MW
- 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 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,505 ha in 2016, 937 ha in 2017, 1,240 ha in 2018, 1,590 ha in 2019, 1,784 ha in 2020, 100 ha in 2021, 1,734 ha in 2022, 229 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,399 ha that had burned before.
- 1,419 ha Gurué fire, August 2016 7,450 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,093 ha Gurué fire, August 2020 3,660 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 799 ha Gurué fire, August 2019 3,400 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 766 ha Gurué fire, September 2022 5,653 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 404 ha Gurué fire, August 2019 3,253 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
-
Gurué where it started3,419 ha reached on 29 Jul0.6 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Jul | 28.0 °C | 22 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 28 Jul | 28.3 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 29 Jul | 29.5 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 30 Jul | 28.5 °C | 25 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 31 Jul | 28.4 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Aug after | 23.9 °C | 45 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 2 Aug after | 25.8 °C | 41 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 4 Aug after | 27.8 °C | 33 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 5 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 25 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Aug after | 28.5 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Aug after | 26.2 °C | 41 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 8 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 38 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Aug after | 28.5 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Aug after | 28.4 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
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 27 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 62 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 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 · 40Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,450 haGuruéAugust 2016 · 11 days · 2 km away
- 11,093 haGurué16 August 2026 · 23 days · 31 km away
- 21,565 haNamarrói14 September 2016 · 13 days · 38 km away
- 20,261 haGurué12 September 2017 · 9 days · 38 km away
- 11,909 haGurué9 September 2017 · 15 days · 39 km away
- 8,051 haGurué1 September 2026 · 17 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Gurué fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 July 2024 and 31 July 2024: 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 3,402 hectares (34.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Gurué (3,419 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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
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. 40 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.