How long did the Liúpo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2017 to 20 October 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2017 to 17 October 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,527 hectares (55.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Liúpo (5,560 ha, 2.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 50 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2017-09-30 → 2017-10-20

Liúpo fire, September 2017 Liúpo

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2017, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2017 in Liúpo, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,527 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 120th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 60 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Liúpo · 2016 Liúpo · 2016 Liúpo · 2025 Liúpo · 2026

Burnt area: 5,527ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 30 Sept 2017 – 20 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 232; in a single hotspot: 99 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 184MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept20 Oct

Play back 20 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 5 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct 16 Oct 20 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

34°high

50km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,726 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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

Liúpo where it started

5,560 ha reached on 30 Sept

2.6 %

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)
6 Oct	30.2 °C	52 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
7 Oct	30.5 °C	52 %	43 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
8 Oct	31.6 °C	42 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Oct	31.7 °C	45 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Oct	32.8 °C	42 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Oct	34.0 °C	41 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Oct	31.8 °C	50 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
13 Oct	29.4 °C	46 %	49 km/h	0.5 mm	High 35
14 Oct	27.0 °C	52 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Oct	28.3 °C	44 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
16 Oct	31.2 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Oct	34.5 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
18 Oct	34.4 °C	39 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Oct	32.7 °C	47 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Oct	33.8 °C	45 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Oct after	31.5 °C	54 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
22 Oct after	32.4 °C	47 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
23 Oct after	30.8 °C	54 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Oct after	31.9 °C	47 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Oct after	32.7 °C	39 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
26 Oct after	34.9 °C	36 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Oct after	34.7 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Sept 2017

After · 27 Oct 2017

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 · 232Every 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 Liúpo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2017 to 20 October 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2017 to 17 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,527 hectares (55.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Liúpo (5,560 ha, 2.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 50 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

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: 17 October 2017 → 20 October 2017.
26 October 2026 Start date: 6 October 2017 → 30 September 2017.

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 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?

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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 6 October 2017 to 17 October 2017. 232 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