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Meconta fire, 30 September 2022 Meconta, Mogovolas

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2022, 10:29 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2022 in Meconta, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,459 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 124th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 72 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Meconta · 2018Liúpo · 2017Meconta · 2020Liúpo · 2020

Burnt area
5,459ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
30 Sept 2022 – 19 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
30 Sept
2022
Heat detections
160
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
70MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept19 Oct
20 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

4 Oct 2022 · 23 MW · 3 5 Oct 2022 · 144 MW · 18 6 Oct 2022 · 138 MW · 27 7 Oct 2022 · 259 MW · 33 8 Oct 2022 · 23 MW · 5 9 Oct 2022 · 13 MW · 3 10 Oct 2022 · 39 MW · 7 12 Oct 2022 · 72 MW · 8 13 Oct 2022 · 28 MW · 5 14 Oct 2022 · 74 MW · 12 15 Oct 2022 · 108 MW · 27 16 Oct 2022 · 71 MW · 8 18 Oct 2022 · 39 MW · 2 19 Oct 2022 · 11 MW · 1 20 Oct 2022 · 5 MW · 1
4 Oct 7 Oct 10 Oct 14 Oct 18 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

34°high
43km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 19 Oct.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 867 ha in 2016, 617 ha in 2017, 2,748 ha in 2018, 705 ha in 2019, 622 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,300 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (55 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. Meconta where it started
    3,901 ha reached on 4 Oct
    1.0 %
  2. Mogovolas
    1,595 ha reached on 8 Oct
    0.3 %

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)
5 Oct 33.4 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct 33.7 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Oct 33.3 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Oct 32.8 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Oct 33.1 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Oct 32.5 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Oct 32.5 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Oct 32.3 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
13 Oct 33.6 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Oct 33.8 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Oct 32.7 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Oct 32.4 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Oct 32.4 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
18 Oct 31.8 °C 47 % 31 km/h 0.9 mm High 23
19 Oct 32.0 °C 42 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2022
After · 26 Oct 2022

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 17 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 104 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak104 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10150 µg/m³
Optical depth1.05
28293012345678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 160Every 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 Meconta fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2022 to 19 October 2022 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 October 2022 to 16 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,459 hectares (54.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Meconta (3,901 ha, 1.0 %); Mogovolas (1,595 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 43 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 October 2022 → 19 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 5 October 2022 → 30 September 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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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 5 October 2022 to 16 October 2022. 160 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.

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.