Milange fire, 27 September 2023 Milange, Mocuba
The fire started on 27 September 2023 in Milange, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,299 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 158th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 841 with a page). Number 16 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 10,299ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 20days
- 27 Sept 2023 – 16 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Sept
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 511
- in a single hotspot: 98 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 296MW
- 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 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.6 mm on 17 Oct.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,811 ha in 2016, 3,043 ha in 2017, 5,416 ha in 2018, 4,280 ha in 2019, 7,925 ha in 2020, 5,328 ha in 2021, 2,150 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,879 ha that had burned before.
- 5,821 ha Milange fire, September 2020 41,830 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,636 ha Mocuba fire, September 2018 116,289 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,515 ha Milange fire, September 2021 3,361 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,341 ha Mocuba fire, September 2017 44,276 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,958 ha Milange fire, September 2016 99,267 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,606 ha Milange fire, September 2018 21,540 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,376 ha Lugela fire, September 2019 37,409 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 193 ha Milange fire, September 2020 13,179 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 started9,610 ha reached on 27 Sept1.7 %
-
758 ha reached on 27 Sept0.1 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Sept | 34.1 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Sept | 33.5 °C | 34 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 29 Sept | 33.5 °C | 32 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 30 Sept | 35.6 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 1 Oct | 38.5 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Oct | 31.5 °C | 41 % | 43 km/h | 3.1 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 3 Oct | 26.6 °C | 50 % | 36 km/h | 1.5 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 4 Oct | 31.2 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 5 Oct | 33.9 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Oct | 36.2 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Oct | 37.4 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 8 Oct | 38.8 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 Oct | 34.5 °C | 34 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 10 Oct | 35.1 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 11 Oct | 35.6 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Oct | 37.3 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 13 Oct | 40.1 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 14 Oct | 40.2 °C | 18 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 15 Oct | 34.2 °C | 40 % | 40 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Oct | 36.3 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 17 Oct after | 33.1 °C | 49 % | 38 km/h | 18.6 mm | Very low 5 |
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 9 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 84 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily 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 · 511Every 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?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2023 to 16 October 2023 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 October 2023 to 14 October 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,299 hectares (103.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Milange (9,610 ha, 1.7 %); Mocuba (758 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
- 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 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 14 October 2023 → 16 October 2023.
- Start date: 4 October 2023 → 27 September 2023.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 October 2023 to 14 October 2023. 511 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.