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Mecula fire, 3 October 2018 Mecula

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2018, 23:23 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2018 in Mecula, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 285th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 567 with a page). Number 104 in Mozambique in 2018, of 220.

Burnt area
4,252ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
3 Oct 2018 – 13 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Oct
2018
Heat detections
127
in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Energy released
795MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct13 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

34567891011121314

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
33km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 626 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Mecula where it started
    4,288 ha reached on 2 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
3 Oct 31.4 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Oct 31.7 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
5 Oct 31.1 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Oct 30.4 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Oct 31.1 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Oct 31.6 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Oct 29.8 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Oct 30.9 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
11 Oct 31.7 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Oct 31.8 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
13 Oct 32.5 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Oct after 32.8 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Oct after 33.7 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Oct after 35.0 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Oct after 33.9 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Oct after 32.7 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm High 28
19 Oct after 33.7 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
20 Oct after 33.8 °C 36 % 27 km/h 1.4 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 2018
After · 20 Oct 2018

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 · 127Every 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 Mecula fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 October 2018 and 13 October 2018: 11 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 4,252 hectares (42.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mecula (4,288 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

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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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.