Mandimba fire, 31 August 2025 Mandimba
The fire started on 31 August 2025 in Mandimba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,364 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 196th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 583 with a page). Number 117 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,364ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 33days
- 31 Aug 2025 – 2 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 181
- in a single hotspot: 84 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 62MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 311 ha in 2018, 162 ha in 2022, 1,055 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,143 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Mandimba where it started5,391 ha reached on 31 Aug1.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Sept | 29.0 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 8 Sept | 29.5 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Sept | 29.7 °C | 38 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 10 Sept | 31.0 °C | 34 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 11 Sept | 29.9 °C | 27 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Sept | 30.0 °C | 27 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Sept | 29.6 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 14 Sept | 29.9 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Sept | 28.4 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 28 |
| 16 Sept | 31.2 °C | 32 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 17 Sept | 32.1 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 18 Sept | 31.2 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Sept | 31.1 °C | 42 % | 38 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Sept | 29.0 °C | 38 % | 40 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 21 Sept | 29.7 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Sept | 30.5 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 23 Sept | 30.5 °C | 34 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Sept | 29.8 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 25 Sept | 30.8 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Sept | 28.7 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 27 Sept | 29.3 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 28 Sept | 30.9 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Sept | 33.1 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 30 Sept | 29.9 °C | 46 % | 34 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Oct | 26.0 °C | 54 % | 42 km/h | 0.7 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 2 Oct | 28.0 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Oct after | 28.2 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 4 Oct after | 27.2 °C | 33 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Oct after | 25.6 °C | 44 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 14 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 75 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 181Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,640 haMandimba6 September 2026 · 21 days · 10 km away
- 4,986 haMandimbaOctober 2026 · 16 days · 15 km away
- 5,695 haMandimba4 September 2026 · 24 days · 20 km away
- 3,427 haNgauma25 August 2025 · 29 days · 21 km away
- 7,892 haNgauma3 September 2026 · 24 days · 25 km away
- 4,610 haMandimba3 September 2026 · 18 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mandimba fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2025 to 2 October 2025 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2025 to 25 September 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,364 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mandimba (5,391 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 25 September 2025 → 2 October 2025.
- Start date: 7 September 2025 → 31 August 2025.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 September 2025 to 25 September 2025. 181 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.