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Marromeu fire, 30 September 2016 Marromeu

Out · last detection 31 Oct 2016, 11:43 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2016 in Marromeu, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,186 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 13 in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Marromeu · 2020Marromeu · 2020Marromeu · 2021Marromeu · 2016

Burnt area
14,186ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
30 Sept 2016 – 30 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
30 Sept
2016
Heat detections
694
in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
222MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept30 Oct
31 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 2016 · 14 MW · 5 1 Oct 2016 · 438 MW · 27 2 Oct 2016 · 1,106 MW · 61 4 Oct 2016 · 39 MW · 6 5 Oct 2016 · 56 MW · 8 6 Oct 2016 · 11 MW · 2 7 Oct 2016 · 101 MW · 9 8 Oct 2016 · 153 MW · 19 9 Oct 2016 · 444 MW · 43 10 Oct 2016 · 407 MW · 41 11 Oct 2016 · 328 MW · 38 12 Oct 2016 · 367 MW · 35 13 Oct 2016 · 113 MW · 14 14 Oct 2016 · 72 MW · 14 15 Oct 2016 · 372 MW · 48 16 Oct 2016 · 463 MW · 37 17 Oct 2016 · 804 MW · 55 18 Oct 2016 · 124 MW · 17 19 Oct 2016 · 9 MW · 5 20 Oct 2016 · 446 MW · 75 21 Oct 2016 · 556 MW · 47 22 Oct 2016 · 260 MW · 36 23 Oct 2016 · 11 MW · 9 24 Oct 2016 · 69 MW · 16 25 Oct 2016 · 2 MW · 2 26 Oct 2016 · 15 MW · 3 27 Oct 2016 · 11 MW · 3 28 Oct 2016 · 11 MW · 3 29 Oct 2016 · 27 MW · 2 30 Oct 2016 · 31 MW · 5 31 Oct 2016 · 8 MW · 1
30 Sept 2 Oct 6 Oct 11 Oct 16 Oct 21 Oct 26 Oct 31 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
55km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 8 Nov.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9% of the area of London (142 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. Marromeu where it started
    14,282 ha reached on 24 Sept
    2.5 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
24 Sept 34.2 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Sept 33.9 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Sept 30.1 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Sept 31.6 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Sept 36.7 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Sept 34.4 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Sept 33.3 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Oct 33.4 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Oct 35.8 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
3 Oct 24.5 °C 68 % 55 km/h 9.2 mm Very low 4
4 Oct 26.2 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm Low 10
5 Oct 27.0 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
6 Oct 32.0 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Oct 34.6 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Oct 31.3 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Oct 33.8 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Oct 33.0 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
11 Oct 33.0 °C 48 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
12 Oct 35.4 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct 30.2 °C 54 % 44 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
14 Oct 27.7 °C 62 % 40 km/h 2.7 mm Low 7
15 Oct 30.5 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
16 Oct 33.7 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Oct 36.5 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Oct 30.3 °C 65 % 51 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 15
19 Oct 29.4 °C 62 % 45 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 14
20 Oct 31.5 °C 47 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Oct 32.1 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
22 Oct 33.6 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Oct 35.7 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
24 Oct 37.5 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Oct 35.5 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Oct 34.8 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
27 Oct 33.9 °C 44 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Oct 35.1 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Oct 34.4 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Oct 35.6 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Oct after 35.9 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Nov after 34.6 °C 48 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
2 Nov after 32.1 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Nov after 31.4 °C 53 % 39 km/h 0.7 mm High 22
4 Nov after 33.0 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Nov after 34.3 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Nov after 37.1 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Nov after 36.8 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Nov after 34.7 °C 47 % 42 km/h 1.9 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2016
After · 6 Nov 2016

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 · 694Every 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 Marromeu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 September 2016 and 30 October 2016: 31 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 14,186 hectares (141.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Marromeu (14,282 ha, 2.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

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. 694 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 2015, 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.