How long did the Mecula fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2016 and 29 August 2016: 10 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 12,038 hectares (120.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mecula (12,110 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 · 2016-08-20 → 2016-08-29

Mecula fire, 20 August 2016 Mecula

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2016, 11:07 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2016 in Mecula, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,038 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 38th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 577 with a page). Number 17 in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mecula · 2021 Mecula · 2021 Mecula · 2018 Mecula · 2022

Burnt area: 12,038ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 20 Aug 2016 – 29 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 20 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 402; in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 302MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug29 Aug

Play back 30 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug 30 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

31%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (120 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

Mecula where it started

12,110 ha reached on 20 Aug

0.7 %

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)
20 Aug	30.6 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Aug	30.7 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
22 Aug	31.9 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Aug	31.6 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Aug	30.2 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Aug	28.8 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Aug	30.0 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
27 Aug	30.0 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
28 Aug	29.8 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
29 Aug	29.0 °C	34 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
30 Aug after	30.6 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
31 Aug after	30.5 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
1 Sept after	27.3 °C	42 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Sept after	26.8 °C	43 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
3 Sept after	28.8 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
4 Sept after	28.8 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
5 Sept after	28.3 °C	46 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Sept after	29.0 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
7 Sept after	28.7 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
8 Sept after	31.1 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Aug 2016

After · 5 Sept 2016

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 · 402Every 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 Mecula fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2016 and 29 August 2016: 10 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 12,038 hectares (120.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mecula (12,110 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 ↗

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 402 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