Lugela fire, 27 September 2020 Lugela
The fire started on 27 September 2020 in Lugela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,003 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 64th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 841 with a page). Number 8 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 25,003ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 34days
- 27 Sept 2020 – 30 Oct 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Sept
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 1,672
- in a single hotspot: 203 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 708MW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.9 mm on 31 Oct.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19,144 ha in 2016, 19,142 ha in 2017, 7,128 ha in 2018, 15,075 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 23,817 ha that had burned before.
- 19,144 ha Milange fire, September 2016 99,267 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 13,073 ha Lugela fire, September 2017 31,184 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,451 ha Lugela fire, October 2019 9,436 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,182 ha Lugela fire, September 2019 13,589 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,422 ha Lugela fire, October 2017 14,385 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,952 ha Lugela fire, October 2018 3,927 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,697 ha Lugela fire, September 2019 14,946 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,405 ha Lugela fire, September 2019 5,844 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
-
Lugela where it started25,141 ha reached on 27 Sept4.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Sept | 37.8 °C | 21 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 28 Sept | 37.3 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Sept | 36.1 °C | 26 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Sept | 34.7 °C | 31 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Oct | 35.7 °C | 28 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 2 Oct | 38.0 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Oct | 36.1 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 4 Oct | 36.5 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 Oct | 32.0 °C | 41 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Oct | 28.6 °C | 47 % | 31 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 25 |
| 7 Oct | 29.9 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 8 Oct | 30.0 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 9 Oct | 32.9 °C | 36 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 10 Oct | 38.4 °C | 29 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 11 Oct | 36.3 °C | 36 % | 34 km/h | 5.8 mm | Low 11 |
| 12 Oct | 29.1 °C | 58 % | 35 km/h | 3.9 mm | Very low 5 |
| 13 Oct | 27.0 °C | 60 % | 25 km/h | 0.5 mm | Low 7 |
| 14 Oct | 28.4 °C | 45 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 15 Oct | 28.8 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.7 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 16 Oct | 33.1 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 17 Oct | 32.4 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 25 |
| 18 Oct | 33.1 °C | 29 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 19 Oct | 35.1 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 20 Oct | 35.6 °C | 23 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 21 Oct | 37.8 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 22 Oct | 34.1 °C | 28 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 23 Oct | 33.4 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Oct | 34.2 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 25 Oct | 34.3 °C | 32 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Oct | 35.3 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 27 Oct | 34.2 °C | 34 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Oct | 35.5 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 29 Oct | 36.4 °C | 26 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 30 Oct | 36.0 °C | 28 % | 44 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 35 |
| 31 Oct after | 35.6 °C | 26 % | 48 km/h | 6.9 mm | Moderate 13 |
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.
Detections table · 1,672Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lugela fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2020 to 30 October 2020 (34 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 October 2020 to 28 October 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 25,003 hectares (250.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lugela (25,141 ha, 4.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 28 October 2020 → 30 October 2020.
- Start date: 4 October 2020 → 27 September 2020.
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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 October 2020 to 28 October 2020. 1,672 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.