Burned area
satellite only6,038ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 25 Sept 2024 – 1 Oct 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
MZ · Mozambique · –
Lugela fire, 25 September 2024 Lugela
Out · last detection 1 Oct 2024, 11:17 UTC
The fire started on 25 September 2024 in Lugela, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,038 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 183th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 564 with a page). Number 42 in Mozambique in 2024, of 150.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lugela · 2023Ile · 2020Lugela · 2022Lugela · 2020
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only7days
25 Sept 2024 to 1 Oct 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 1 Oct 2024, 11:17 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only25 Sept 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 25 Sept 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only300
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 74 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 25 Sept 2024 – 1 Oct 2024
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,066MW
Total radiative power on 29 September 2024; hotspots that day: 100.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 29 Sept 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model5.2FWI · low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 0.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 25 Sept 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model34.6°C · 29% RH
High of 34.6 °C and minimum humidity of 29% on 1 October 2024; gusts of 44 km/h on 1 October 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 25 Sept 2024 – 1 Oct 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 350people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 2.5 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 6,038 ha
- Dates
- 25 Sept 2024 – 1 Oct 2024
- Name
- Lugela
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/lugela-2024-09-4?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire lugela-2024-09-4.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-09-25 | 7 | 75 | 27.7 | 15.2 | 39 | 8.8 | 17.3 | 0 | 5.2 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2024-09-26 | 12 | 90 | 32.1 | 14.8 | 32 | 9.7 | 21.2 | 0 | 13.8 | moderado | 1 |
| 2024-09-27 | 27 | 226 | 33 | 18.6 | 32 | 10 | 24.5 | 0 | 16.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2024-09-28 | 25 | 136 | 33.2 | 18.8 | 31 | 10.5 | 25.9 | 0 | 18.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2024-09-29 | 100 | 1,066 | 33.3 | 18 | 27 | 10.6 | 29.2 | 0 | 20.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2024-09-30 | 70 | 796 | 34.5 | 18.1 | 23 | 13.4 | 34.2 | 0 | 25.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-10-01 | 59 | 471 | 34.6 | 19.2 | 29 | 18.7 | 43.9 | 0 | 30.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-10-02 | 0 | 0 | 26.7 | 19.8 | 72 | 14.8 | 37.8 | 13.6 | 0.3 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 6,038ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 25 Sept 2024 – 1 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 300
- in a single hotspot: 74 MW
- Danger at start
- 5
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 408MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
25 Sept1 Oct
1 Oct 2024
How it evolved, day by day
25 Sept
27 Sept
29 Sept
1 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
35°high
44km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.6 mm on 2 Oct.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,488 ha in 2016, 3,904 ha in 2017, 2,504 ha in 2018, 1,947 ha in 2019, 3,917 ha in 2020, 1,490 ha in 2021, 4,392 ha in 2022, 4,436 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,020 ha that had burned before.
- 4,392 ha Lugela fire, September 2022 172,167 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,910 ha Lugela fire, September 2020 110,845 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,945 ha Namarrói fire, October 2017 45,014 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,591 ha Lugela fire, September 2023 17,879 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,523 ha Lugela fire, September 2018 3,350 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,481 ha Lugela fire, October 2021 3,714 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 282 ha Lugela fire, September 2018 5,893 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 173 ha Namarrói fire, September 2016 76,091 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 started6,066 ha reached on 25 Sept1.0 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area2.5 ha
Residents≈ 350
Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 350 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Sept | 27.7 °C | 39 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 26 Sept | 32.1 °C | 32 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 27 Sept | 33.0 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 28 Sept | 33.2 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 29 Sept | 33.3 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 30 Sept | 34.5 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 1 Oct | 34.6 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Oct after | 26.7 °C | 72 % | 38 km/h | 13.6 mm | Very low 0 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 5.2, a minimum humidity of 39% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 25.
FWI at the start
5.2
Minimum humidity
39 %
Days without rain
0
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Lugela fire, 25 September 2024
6,038 ha
7 days
FWI 5.2
Min. humidity 39 %
Lugela fire, October 2023
9,839 ha
11 days
FWI 5.5
Min. humidity 39 %
22 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 8.0 mm on 17 Oct.
Ile fire, September 2020
18,502 ha
22 days
FWI 7.0
Min. humidity 39 %
71 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Gurué fire, September 2018
8,625 ha
17 days
FWI 6.9
Min. humidity 40 %
99 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 30 Sept.
Namarrói fire, September 2023
3,836 ha
16 days
FWI 7.2
Min. humidity 36 %
15 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 2 Oct.
Lugela fire, October 2020
5,996 ha
20 days
FWI 5.6
Min. humidity 39 %
35 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.5 mm on 31 Oct.
What happened to them
- 17 days
- median duration
- 5,193 ha
- median area
- 20 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 2.4 mm
- rain at the end (median; 18 of 25 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (6,038 ha against a median of 5,193 ha) and lasted 7 days, against 17 days.
In 7 of 25, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.4 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
13.6 mmfirst rain
2 Octthe day after it ended
44km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 1 Oct, and on 2 Oct 13.6 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 18 of 25, with a median of 2.4 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 18 Sept 2024
After · 8 Oct 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 1 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1087 µg/m³
Optical depth1.59
WHO 15
23 Sept26 Sept29 Sept2 Oct
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 · 300Every 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
- 57,742 haLugela5 October 2026 · 28 days · 6 km away
- 172,167 haLugelaSeptember 2022 · 48 days · 34 km away
- 110,845 haLugela6 September 2020 · 39 days · 34 km away
- 184,318 haLugela27 August 2025 · 77 days · 37 km away
- 79,454 haLugela 5 October 2026 · 34 days · 39 km away
- 213,498 haNamarrói16 August 2026 · 44 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lugela fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 September 2024 and 1 October 2024: 7 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 6,038 hectares (60.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lugela (6,066 ha, 1.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 25. Their median duration was 17 days and their median area 5,193 ha; 20 % went past 10,000 ha. In 7 of 25, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.4 mm.
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 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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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. 300 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.