Milange fire, 11 September 2020 Milange
The fire started on 11 September 2020 in Milange, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,746 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 113th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 17 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 13,746ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 11 Sept 2020 – 21 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 11 Sept
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 655
- in a single hotspot: 109 MW
- Danger at start
- 21
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 495MW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,682 ha in 2016, 2,200 ha in 2017, 4,294 ha in 2018, 2,975 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,398 ha that had burned before.
- 2,459 ha Morrumbala fire, September 2016 75,456 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,866 ha Milange fire, September 2018 4,707 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,694 ha Milange fire, September 2016 3,987 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,663 ha Milange fire, September 2017 3,169 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 34 ha Milange fire, September 2019 16,916 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Morrumbala fire, September 2017 12,018 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Milange where it started13,837 ha reached on 10 Sept2.5 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Sept | 28.5 °C | 34 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 11 Sept | 27.5 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 12 Sept | 27.2 °C | 41 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 13 Sept | 28.9 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 14 Sept | 31.7 °C | 34 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 15 Sept | 33.5 °C | 31 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 16 Sept | 33.1 °C | 28 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 17 Sept | 34.5 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Sept | 32.0 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 19 Sept | 32.1 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Sept | 32.8 °C | 23 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 21 Sept | 33.9 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 22 Sept after | 29.3 °C | 37 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 23 Sept after | 26.3 °C | 45 % | 43 km/h | 2.8 mm | Low 8 |
| 24 Sept after | 29.2 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 25 Sept after | 32.2 °C | 32 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 26 Sept after | 36.1 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 27 Sept after | 36.7 °C | 20 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 28 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 26 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Sept after | 33.0 °C | 33 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 1 Oct after | 34.7 °C | 28 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 2 Oct after | 36.7 °C | 22 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 3 Oct after | 35.3 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 4 Oct after | 35.8 °C | 30 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Oct after | 31.9 °C | 41 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 6 Oct after | 27.6 °C | 46 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 7 Oct after | 30.2 °C | 34 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 8 Oct after | 29.6 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
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.
Detections table · 655Every 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 Milange fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 September 2020 and 21 September 2020: 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 13,746 hectares (137.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Milange (13,837 ha, 2.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 655 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.
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.