How long did the Macomia fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 August 2021 and 23 August 2021: 12 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 4,144 hectares (41.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Macomia (4,173 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2021-08-12 → 2021-08-23

Macomia fire, 12 August 2021 Macomia

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2021, 10:42 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2021 in Macomia, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,144 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 51th largest in Cabo Delgado since 2016 (of 120 with a page). Number 118 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Quissanga · 2020 Macomia · 2019 Macomia · 2021 Quissanga · 2021

Burnt area: 4,144ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 12 Aug 2021 – 23 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 12 Aug; 2021
Heat detections: 197; in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 154MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug23 Aug

Play back 24 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

12 Aug 14 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 20 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high

44km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 27 Aug.

This area had burned before

54% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 996 ha in 2019, 1,460 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,225 ha that had burned before.

914 ha Quissanga fire, July 2020 3,073 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

Macomia where it started

4,173 ha reached on 12 Aug

1.0 %

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.

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)
12 Aug	30.2 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
13 Aug	30.2 °C	46 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
14 Aug	30.6 °C	43 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Aug	29.3 °C	49 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Aug	30.1 °C	43 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
17 Aug	28.8 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
18 Aug	29.2 °C	48 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
19 Aug	30.4 °C	40 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
20 Aug	31.9 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Aug	32.0 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
22 Aug	30.9 °C	51 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
23 Aug	30.8 °C	46 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
24 Aug after	30.4 °C	45 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Aug after	30.5 °C	40 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Aug after	30.5 °C	45 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Aug after	30.6 °C	48 %	38 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Aug 2021

After · 30 Aug 2021

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 · 197Every 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 Macomia fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 August 2021 and 23 August 2021: 12 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 4,144 hectares (41.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Macomia (4,173 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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.

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 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

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 197 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