How long did the Mecubúri fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 August 2026 to 17 August 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 August 2026 to 14 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,072 hectares (40.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mecubúri (4,093 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2026-08-05 → 2026-08-17

Mecubúri fire, 5 August 2026 Mecubúri

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2026, 10:45 UTC

The fire started on 5 August 2026 in Mecubúri, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,072 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 203th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 391 with a page). Number 310 in Mozambique in 2026, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mecubúri · 2016 Mecubúri · 2017 Mecubúri · 2016 Mecubúri · 2016

Burnt area: 4,072ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 5 Aug 2026 – 17 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 5 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 77; in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 77MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Aug17 Aug

Play back 17 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Aug 7 Aug 9 Aug 11 Aug 14 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

49km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,136 ha in 2016, 1,240 ha in 2017, 703 ha in 2018, 150 ha in 2019, 156 ha in 2020, 1,080 ha in 2021, 239 ha in 2022, 690 ha in 2023, 334 ha in 2024, 587 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,003 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

4,093 ha reached on 5 Aug

0.6 %

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 2025

Built-up area8.8 ha

Residents≈ 1,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.8 hectares of built-up land and about 1,600 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
5 Aug	27.3 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Aug	29.2 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Aug	30.5 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Aug	29.7 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Aug	29.8 °C	35 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Aug	30.3 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
11 Aug	31.3 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Aug	31.8 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Aug	28.0 °C	43 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
14 Aug	25.5 °C	45 %	49 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
15 Aug	24.9 °C	46 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Aug	27.7 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Aug	28.5 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Aug after	28.7 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Aug after	29.6 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Aug after	29.4 °C	39 %	29 km/h	0.5 mm	High 31
21 Aug after	31.1 °C	42 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
22 Aug after	32.9 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Aug after	33.1 °C	21 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Aug after	30.6 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Aug after	30.9 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Aug after	30.2 °C	37 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Aug after	30.1 °C	34 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Jul 2026

After · 24 Aug 2026

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 12 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1033 µg/m³

Optical depth0.69

WHO 15

34567891011121314151617181920

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 · 77Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 August 2026 to 17 August 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 August 2026 to 14 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,072 hectares (40.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mecubúri (4,093 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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: 14 August 2026 → 17 August 2026.
26 October 2026 Start date: 8 August 2026 → 5 August 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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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?

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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 8 August 2026 to 14 August 2026. 77 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 2025, 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