Mecula fire, 21 October 2026 Mavago, Mecula
The fire started on 21 October 2026 in Mecula, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,022 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 322th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 584 with a page). Number 317 in Mozambique in 2026, of 540.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mavago · 2023Mecula · 2022Mecula · 2018Mecula · 2026
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 28 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. 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
- 4,022ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 21 Oct 2026 – 28 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 21 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 74
- in a single hotspot: 51 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 96MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 663 ha in 2018, 385 ha in 2019, 190 ha in 2020, 455 ha in 2022, 808 ha in 2023, 817 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,933 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
3,824 ha reached on 22 Oct0.4 %
-
Mecula where it started217 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Oct | 38.0 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Oct | 39.2 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 23 Oct | 39.4 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 24 Oct | 37.5 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 25 Oct | 34.9 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 33 |
| 26 Oct | 36.3 °C | 24 % | 36 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 39 |
| 27 Oct | 36.7 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 39 |
| 28 Oct | 37.3 °C | 21 % | 29 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.
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 · CopernicusOn 25 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mecula fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 October 2026 to 28 October 2026 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 October 2026 to 27 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,022 hectares (40.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mavago (3,824 ha, 0.4 %); Mecula (217 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Mecula fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 28 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 27 October 2026.
- Area: 3,258 → 4,022 ha.
- Page published (3,258 ha).
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.
Report an error
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 22 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.
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.