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Larde fire, 1 September 2025 Larde

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2025, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2025 in Larde, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 384th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 301 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.0 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: Larde · 2023Larde · 2016Larde · 2020Larde · 2025

Burnt area
3,043ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
1 Sept 2025 – 16 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2025
Heat detections
71
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
37MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept16 Sept
16 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2025 · 6 MW · 1 3 Sept 2025 · 11 MW · 2 4 Sept 2025 · 5 MW · 1 9 Sept 2025 · 43 MW · 6 10 Sept 2025 · 70 MW · 10 11 Sept 2025 · 50 MW · 6 12 Sept 2025 · 93 MW · 11 13 Sept 2025 · 8 MW · 1 14 Sept 2025 · 30 MW · 4 15 Sept 2025 · 14 MW · 1 16 Sept 2025 · 82 MW · 9
1 Sept 4 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 14 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
38km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 954 ha in 2016, 1 ha in 2017, 1,094 ha in 2018, 552 ha in 2019, 188 ha in 2020, 231 ha in 2021, 129 ha in 2022, 1,201 ha in 2023, 1,460 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,913 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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

  1. Larde where it started
    3,059 ha reached on 25 Aug
    1.6 %

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)
1 Sept 30.3 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Sept 31.3 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
3 Sept 31.5 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Sept 33.0 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Sept 30.4 °C 45 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Sept 32.9 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 32.4 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Sept 32.4 °C 49 % 33 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 13
9 Sept 32.3 °C 41 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
10 Sept 32.8 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Sept 32.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Sept 32.4 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Sept 31.9 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept 33.1 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept 31.8 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Sept 34.6 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept after 36.2 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept after 35.3 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Sept after 31.7 °C 49 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Sept after 30.7 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Sept after 31.3 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Sept after 33.6 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept after 34.8 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Sept after 34.1 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept after 32.8 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Sept after 30.5 °C 47 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2025
After · 23 Sept 2025

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 · Copernicus

On 31 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM1042 µg/m³
Optical depth0.65
303112345678910111213141516171819
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 71Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Larde fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2025 and 16 September 2025: 16 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 3,043 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Larde (3,059 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.

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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. 71 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.