How long did the Mecubúri fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2022 and 13 October 2022: 13 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 6,758 hectares (67.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mecubúri (4,662 ha, 0.6 %); Muecate (2,142 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2022-10-01 → 2022-10-13

Mecubúri fire, 1 October 2022 Mecubúri, Muecate

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2022, 10:42 UTC

The fire started on 1 October 2022 in Mecubúri, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,758 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 97th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 55 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mecubúri · 2017 Mecubúri · 2025 Mecubúri · 2021 Muecate · 2024

Burnt area: 6,758ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 1 Oct 2022 – 13 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 1 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 343; in a single hotspot: 122 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 309MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Oct13 Oct

Play back 14 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct 13 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

41km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,222 ha in 2017, 1,240 ha in 2018, 2,281 ha in 2019, 1,230 ha in 2020, 806 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,929 ha that had burned before.

1,914 ha Mecubúri fire, September 2017 3,159 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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

Mecubúri where it started

4,662 ha reached on 26 Sept

0.6 %
Muecate

2,142 ha reached on 26 Sept

0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
1 Oct	31.8 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Oct	30.8 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Oct	32.0 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Oct	32.6 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Oct	31.2 °C	33 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Oct	32.7 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
7 Oct	32.1 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Oct	31.6 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Oct	31.5 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Oct	30.4 °C	34 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
11 Oct	30.7 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
12 Oct	30.6 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	High 28
13 Oct	31.7 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Oct after	32.0 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Oct after	31.5 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
16 Oct after	31.2 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Oct after	31.1 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Oct after	29.8 °C	39 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
19 Oct after	30.1 °C	37 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
20 Oct after	32.3 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
21 Oct after	32.0 °C	31 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
22 Oct after	31.6 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Oct after	31.9 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Sept 2022

After · 20 Oct 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.

Detections table · 343Every 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 Mecubúri fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2022 and 13 October 2022: 13 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 6,758 hectares (67.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mecubúri (4,662 ha, 0.6 %); Muecate (2,142 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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. 343 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.

Where it burned