How long did the Mecula fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 September 2025 and 28 September 2025: 9 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 4,280 hectares (42.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mecula (4,305 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2025-09-20 → 2025-09-28

Mecula fire, 20 September 2025 Mecula

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2025, 10:32 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2025 in Mecula, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,280 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 278th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 567 with a page). Number 170 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 4,280ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 20 Sept 2025 – 28 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 20 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 81; in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 402MW; sum of detected power

Play back 26 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept28 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

20212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

40km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 203 ha in 2016, 898 ha in 2017, 1,247 ha in 2018, 993 ha in 2019, 62 ha in 2020, 1,844 ha in 2021, 1,303 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,690 ha that had burned before.

62 ha Mecula fire, November 2020 5,096 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Mecula where it started

4,305 ha reached on 20 Sept

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)
20 Sept	34.9 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
21 Sept	36.1 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Sept	34.0 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
23 Sept	33.4 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
24 Sept	32.9 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Sept	33.9 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
26 Sept	34.0 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Sept	33.9 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
28 Sept	31.8 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Sept after	34.3 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Sept after	33.8 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
1 Oct after	31.7 °C	42 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
2 Oct after	32.5 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Oct after	30.5 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Oct after	31.4 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Oct after	32.3 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Oct after	31.7 °C	40 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	High 35
7 Oct after	33.5 °C	38 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
8 Oct after	32.2 °C	42 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Sept 2025

After · 5 Oct 2025

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 1 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1028 µg/m³

Optical depth0.57

WHO 15

181920212223242526272829301

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 · 81Every 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 September 2025 and 28 September 2025: 9 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 4,280 hectares (42.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mecula (4,305 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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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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