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Mavago fire, 23 October 2018 Mavago

Out · last detection 3 Nov 2018, 22:08 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2018 in Mavago, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,977 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 52th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 580 with a page). Number 24 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavago · 2017Mavago · 2020Mavago · 2026Mavago · 2022

Burnt area
10,977ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
23 Oct 2018 – 3 Nov 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Oct
2018
Heat detections
324
in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
165MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct3 Nov
3 Nov 2018

How it evolved, day by day

23 Oct 2018 · 418 MW · 62 24 Oct 2018 · 519 MW · 63 25 Oct 2018 · 189 MW · 45 26 Oct 2018 · 95 MW · 31 27 Oct 2018 · 221 MW · 37 28 Oct 2018 · 103 MW · 19 29 Oct 2018 · 78 MW · 17 30 Oct 2018 · 34 MW · 10 31 Oct 2018 · 156 MW · 7 1 Nov 2018 · 34 MW · 12 2 Nov 2018 · 100 MW · 8 3 Nov 2018 · 36 MW · 13
23 Oct 24 Oct 25 Oct 27 Oct 29 Oct 31 Oct 2 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
47km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 4 Nov.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,908 ha in 2016, 1,291 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.9% of the area of London (110 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. Mavago where it started
    11,052 ha reached on 23 Oct
    1.2 %

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.

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)
23 Oct 27.3 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Oct 28.3 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Oct 30.4 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Oct 29.0 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Oct 28.8 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Oct 29.5 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.8 mm High 23
29 Oct 29.8 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Oct 29.4 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Oct 32.5 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Nov 33.2 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Nov 33.2 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Nov 32.7 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Nov after 30.7 °C 40 % 34 km/h 2.2 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Oct 2018
After · 10 Nov 2018

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 · 324Every 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 Mavago fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 October 2018 and 3 November 2018: 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 10,977 hectares (109.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mavago (11,052 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 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. 324 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.