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Magoé fire, September 2022 Magoé

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2022, 23:31 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2022 in Magoé, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,709 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Tete since 2016 (of 115 with a page). Number 66 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Magoé · 2021Magoé · 2017Magoé · 2026Magoé · 2022

Burnt area
5,709ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
16 Sept 2022 – 27 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
16 Sept
2022
Heat detections
305
in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
143MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept27 Sept
28 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 6 17 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 18 Sept 2022 · 128 MW · 30 19 Sept 2022 · 241 MW · 58 20 Sept 2022 · 730 MW · 97 21 Sept 2022 · 317 MW · 41 22 Sept 2022 · 20 MW · 10 23 Sept 2022 · 55 MW · 14 25 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 2 26 Sept 2022 · 64 MW · 16 28 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1
16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 25 Sept 28 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
45km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,517 ha in 2017, 633 ha in 2018, 1,362 ha in 2019, 772 ha in 2020, 933 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,195 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (57 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. Magoé where it started
    5,741 ha reached on 13 Sept
    0.7 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
16 Sept 30.5 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Sept 31.1 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept 33.3 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept 35.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
20 Sept 36.1 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Sept 35.2 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Sept 34.7 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Sept 34.6 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Sept 34.3 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Sept 32.7 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Sept 33.9 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Sept 35.6 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Sept after 33.3 °C 26 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Sept after 32.2 °C 20 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
30 Sept after 33.0 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Oct after 33.9 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Oct after 34.4 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Oct after 34.9 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Oct after 36.8 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Oct after 37.2 °C 13 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Oct after 36.0 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
7 Oct after 37.3 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2022
After · 4 Oct 2022

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 · 305Every 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 Magoé fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 September 2022 and 27 September 2022: 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 5,709 hectares (57.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Magoé (5,741 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.
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 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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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. 305 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.