How long did the Mecula fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 October 2026 to 28 October 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 October 2026 to 27 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,707 hectares (37.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mavago (2,675 ha, 0.3 %); Mecula (1,058 ha, 0.1 %).

Is the Mecula fire still active?

No fire detections since 28 Oct 2026, 11:38 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 2026-10-23 → 2026-10-28

Mecula fire, 23 October 2026 Mavago, Mecula

Dying down · last detection 28 Oct 2026, 11:38 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2026 in Mecula, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,707 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 376th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 584 with a page). Number 364 in Mozambique in 2026, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mavago · 2022 Mavago · 2020 Mecula · 2019 Mavago · 2025

Is it still active?

No detections since 28 Oct 2026, 11:38 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 3,707ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 23 Oct 2026 – 28 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 23 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 217MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct28 Oct

Play back 28 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Oct 24 Oct 25 Oct 26 Oct 27 Oct 28 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

38°high

38km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 325 ha in 2016, 425 ha in 2017, 364 ha in 2018, 1,914 ha in 2020, 2,588 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,246 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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

Mavago

2,675 ha reached on 23 Oct

0.3 %
Mecula where it started

1,058 ha reached on 23 Oct

0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
23 Oct	37.9 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Oct	36.2 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Oct	33.6 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	High 34
26 Oct	35.0 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
27 Oct	35.2 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.3 mm	High 35
28 Oct	36.1 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Oct 2026

After · 28 Oct 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 25 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1033 µg/m³

Optical depth0.46

WHO 15

2122232425

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 · 74Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 October 2026 to 28 October 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 October 2026 to 27 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,707 hectares (37.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mavago (2,675 ha, 0.3 %); Mecula (1,058 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Mecula fire still active?: No fire detections since 28 Oct 2026, 11:38 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 26 October 2026.

28 October 2026 Area: 3,522 → 3,707 ha.
27 October 2026 Area: 3,343 → 3,522 ha.
26 October 2026 Page published (3,343 ha).

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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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 23 October 2026 to 27 October 2026. 74 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.