How long did the Mavago fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2022 to 29 October 2022 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 October 2022 to 27 October 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,375 hectares (63.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mavago (6,412 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2022-10-18 → 2022-10-29

Mavago fire, 18 October 2022 Mavago

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2022, 11:01 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2022 in Mavago, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,375 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 139th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 584 with a page). Number 60 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavago · 2020 Mavago · 2021 Mavago · 2021 Mavago · 2017

Burnt area: 6,375ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 18 Oct 2022 – 29 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 18 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 288; in a single hotspot: 136 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 258MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct29 Oct

Play back 29 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 20 Oct 22 Oct 24 Oct 25 Oct 26 Oct 28 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

33°high

38km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 57 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,058 ha in 2016, 472 ha in 2017, 793 ha in 2018, 1,039 ha in 2019, 3,419 ha in 2020, 1,395 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,111 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (64 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

Mavago where it started

6,412 ha reached on 18 Oct

0.7 %

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)
20 Oct	31.8 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
21 Oct	31.2 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
22 Oct	31.9 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Oct	31.6 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Oct	33.2 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
25 Oct	32.8 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
26 Oct	32.6 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Oct	32.7 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
28 Oct	33.8 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Oct	34.0 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Oct after	32.1 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
31 Oct after	34.1 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Nov after	33.0 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Nov after	31.8 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Nov after	32.5 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
4 Nov after	32.0 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Nov after	33.0 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
6 Nov after	32.6 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Oct 2022

After · 5 Nov 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 29 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 91 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak91 µg/m³

Days over the guideline8 days

PM10130 µg/m³

Optical depth1.91

WHO 15

161718192021222324252627282930311

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 288Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mavago fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2022 to 29 October 2022 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 October 2022 to 27 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,375 hectares (63.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mavago (6,412 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 27 October 2022 → 29 October 2022.
26 October 2026 Start date: 20 October 2022 → 18 October 2022.

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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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 October 2022 to 27 October 2022. 288 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.

Where it burned