Majune fire, November 2021 Majune
The fire started on 1 November 2021 in Majune, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,639 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 183th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 577 with a page). Number 65 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Majune · 2016Majune · 2020Majune · 2020Majune · 2025
- Burnt area
- 5,639ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 1 Nov 2021 – 15 Nov 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 1 Nov
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 207
- in a single hotspot: 318 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 194MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.0 mm on 25 Nov.
This area had burned before
33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,754 ha in 2016, 112 ha in 2020.
- 1,363 ha Majune fire, October 2016 3,709 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 66 ha Majune fire, September 2020 8,800 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 41 ha Majune fire, October 2020 3,395 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
-
Majune where it started5,665 ha reached on 1 Nov0.5 %
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 Nov | 33.1 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 2 Nov | 35.4 °C | 26 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 3 Nov | 34.3 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Nov | 33.9 °C | 29 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Nov | 34.3 °C | 24 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Nov | 34.9 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 7 Nov | 35.3 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 8 Nov | 35.0 °C | 21 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 9 Nov | 35.1 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 10 Nov | 34.5 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 11 Nov | 34.7 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 12 Nov | 34.4 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Nov | 33.7 °C | 36 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Nov | 33.3 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 15 Nov | 32.5 °C | 33 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 16 Nov after | 32.9 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Nov after | 31.9 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Nov after | 33.9 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Nov after | 35.2 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 20 Nov after | 34.4 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Nov after | 32.8 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Nov after | 33.3 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 23 Nov after | 34.4 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Nov after | 37.4 °C | 22 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 25 Nov after | 31.5 °C | 44 % | 33 km/h | 9.0 mm | Low 6 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 207Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,856 haMajune17 September 2025 · 19 days · 11 km away
- 9,690 haMajuneOctober 2019 · 8 days · 20 km away
- 53,253 haMajune7 October 2022 · 22 days · 21 km away
- 12,240 haMajune29 September 2020 · 10 days · 27 km away
- 10,862 haMajune10 September 2025 · 18 days · 30 km away
- 26,386 haMajune1 September 2020 · 22 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Majune fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 November 2021 and 15 November 2021: 15 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 5,639 hectares (56.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Majune (5,665 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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. 207 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.
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.