How long did the Magoé fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2022 and 11 October 2022: 11 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 3,914 hectares (39.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Magoé (3,933 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2022-10-01 → 2022-10-11

Magoé fire, 1 October 2022 Magoé

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2022, 11:38 UTC

The fire started on 1 October 2022 in Magoé, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,914 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 63th largest in Tete since 2016 (of 114 with a page). Number 127 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 3,914ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 1 Oct 2022 – 11 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 155; in a single hotspot: 15 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 62MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Oct11 Oct

Play back 11 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct 11 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

38°high

54km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 603 ha in 2019, 77 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (39 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

Magoé where it started

3,933 ha reached on 1 Oct

0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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	Danger (FWI)
1 Oct	34.9 °C	25 %	45 km/h	Extreme 51
2 Oct	35.4 °C	20 %	42 km/h	Extreme 51
3 Oct	36.0 °C	23 %	37 km/h	Very high 48
4 Oct	37.7 °C	21 %	36 km/h	Very high 49
5 Oct	38.3 °C	15 %	46 km/h	Extreme 60
6 Oct	36.9 °C	15 %	45 km/h	Extreme 59
7 Oct	38.5 °C	15 %	44 km/h	Extreme 60
8 Oct	35.8 °C	23 %	54 km/h	Extreme 64
9 Oct	35.2 °C	21 %	41 km/h	Extreme 55
10 Oct	37.1 °C	21 %	43 km/h	Extreme 57
11 Oct	35.8 °C	21 %	48 km/h	Extreme 62
12 Oct after	35.7 °C	24 %	48 km/h	Extreme 60
13 Oct after	37.0 °C	22 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
14 Oct after	37.0 °C	19 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
15 Oct after	38.0 °C	16 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
16 Oct after	35.8 °C	23 %	45 km/h	Extreme 58
17 Oct after	36.0 °C	24 %	45 km/h	Extreme 58
18 Oct after	35.5 °C	26 %	49 km/h	Extreme 57
19 Oct after	34.6 °C	31 %	48 km/h	Extreme 52
20 Oct after	35.2 °C	29 %	50 km/h	Extreme 54
21 Oct after	35.8 °C	28 %	51 km/h	Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Sept 2022

After · 18 Oct 2022

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 · 155Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Magoé fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2022 and 11 October 2022: 11 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 3,914 hectares (39.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Magoé (3,933 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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. 155 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