How long did the Mocuba fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2021 to 26 September 2021 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2021 to 20 September 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,633 hectares (46.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mocuba (4,660 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 14 Sept 2021 – 26 Sept 2021

Mocuba fire, 14 September 2021 Mocuba

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2021, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2021 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 403th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 91 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mocuba · 2020 Mocuba · 2022 Mocuba · 2024 Mocuba · 2018

Burnt area: 4,633ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 14 Sept 2021 – 26 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 14 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 171; in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 155MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept26 Sept

Play back 26 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept

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

49km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,779 ha in 2016, 414 ha in 2017, 552 ha in 2018, 561 ha in 2019, 3,355 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,887 ha that had burned before.

1,880 ha Mocuba fire, September 2020 86,463 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (46 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

Mocuba where it started

4,660 ha reached on 14 Sept

0.5 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area2.8 ha

Residents≈ 750

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 750 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
14 Sept	34.7 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Sept	35.7 °C	19 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
16 Sept	36.5 °C	22 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Sept	37.6 °C	26 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Sept	27.0 °C	68 %	46 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 7
19 Sept	26.7 °C	42 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
20 Sept	29.4 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Sept	33.5 °C	24 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Sept	28.0 °C	45 %	37 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 20
23 Sept	26.8 °C	53 %	33 km/h	1.4 mm	Low 10
24 Sept	28.0 °C	45 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
25 Sept	31.1 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
26 Sept	32.8 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Sept after	34.1 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Sept after	36.1 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Sept after	37.5 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
30 Sept after	33.7 °C	39 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
1 Oct after	32.6 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Oct after	34.9 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
3 Oct after	38.7 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
4 Oct after	34.8 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Oct after	33.2 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 Oct after	32.1 °C	41 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Sept 2021

After · 3 Oct 2021

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.

Detections table · 171Every 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 Mocuba fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2021 to 26 September 2021 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2021 to 20 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,633 hectares (46.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mocuba (4,660 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 20 September 2021 → 26 September 2021.

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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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 14 September 2021 to 20 September 2021. 171 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 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.

Where it burned