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Macossa fire, 1 September 2023 Bárue, Macossa

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2023, 12:15 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2023 in Macossa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,713 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 2 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bárue · 2017Macossa · 2025Bárue · 2026Bárue · 2016

Burnt area
27,713ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
1 Sept 2023 – 25 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2023
Heat detections
1,919
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
1.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept25 Sept
26 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2023 · 2,282 MW · 127 2 Sept 2023 · 656 MW · 59 3 Sept 2023 · 1,072 MW · 65 4 Sept 2023 · 252 MW · 37 5 Sept 2023 · 2,623 MW · 194 6 Sept 2023 · 3,666 MW · 209 7 Sept 2023 · 554 MW · 62 8 Sept 2023 · 263 MW · 17 9 Sept 2023 · 459 MW · 30 10 Sept 2023 · 3,065 MW · 167 11 Sept 2023 · 5,192 MW · 269 12 Sept 2023 · 3,523 MW · 215 15 Sept 2023 · 250 MW · 30 16 Sept 2023 · 1,464 MW · 137 17 Sept 2023 · 3,758 MW · 180 18 Sept 2023 · 114 MW · 12 19 Sept 2023 · 133 MW · 16 20 Sept 2023 · 51 MW · 9 21 Sept 2023 · 156 MW · 28 22 Sept 2023 · 416 MW · 31 25 Sept 2023 · 38 MW · 8 26 Sept 2023 · 123 MW · 17
1 Sept 5 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 19 Sept 25 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

36°high
61km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 2 Oct.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 18% of the area of London (277 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. Bárue
    16,590 ha
    2.9 %
  2. Macossa where it started
    11,268 ha
    1.2 %

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)
1 Sept 30.9 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Sept 30.2 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
3 Sept 29.6 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
4 Sept 29.5 °C 38 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Sept 30.1 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
6 Sept 31.5 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Sept 28.8 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Sept 29.5 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Sept 29.2 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
10 Sept 31.6 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
11 Sept 34.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Sept 32.8 °C 33 % 61 km/h 1.5 mm High 28
13 Sept 18.7 °C 87 % 49 km/h 7.2 mm Very low 0
14 Sept 25.6 °C 51 % 32 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 2
15 Sept 31.1 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
16 Sept 35.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
17 Sept 36.3 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Sept 29.7 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Sept 30.0 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 19
20 Sept 32.1 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Sept 32.6 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Sept 32.2 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Sept 31.6 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Sept 33.3 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Sept 32.5 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Sept after 35.0 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Sept after 31.0 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
28 Sept after 31.5 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Sept after 30.5 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Sept after 33.9 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
1 Oct after 37.2 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Oct after 23.1 °C 79 % 53 km/h 5.1 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2023
After · 2 Oct 2023

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 7 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 122 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 75: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak122 µg/m³
Days over the guideline27 days
PM10175 µg/m³
Optical depth1.44
303112345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728
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 · 0Every 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 Macossa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2023 and 25 September 2023: 25 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 27,713 hectares (277.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bárue (16,590 ha, 2.9 %); Macossa (11,268 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 61 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.

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 · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 October 2023 → 25 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 31 August 2023 → 1 September 2023.
  3. Name: Bárue → Macossa.
  4. Last day with fire: 25 September 2023 → 1 October 2023.
  5. Start date: 1 September 2023 → 31 August 2023.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.