How long did the Mocuba fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2022 to 14 October 2022 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2022 to 9 October 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,199 hectares (42.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mocuba (4,224 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 2022-09-23 → 2022-10-14

Mocuba fire, 23 September 2022 Mocuba

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2022, 10:41 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2022 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,199 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 484th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 109 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mocuba · 2021 Mocuba · 2021 Mocuba · 2021 Mocuba · 2024

Burnt area: 4,199ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 23 Sept 2022 – 14 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 23 Sept; 2022
Heat detections: 176; in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 92MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept14 Oct

Play back 14 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 27 Sept 1 Oct 4 Oct 6 Oct 7 Oct 10 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

40km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 441 ha in 2016, 782 ha in 2018, 1,243 ha in 2020, 2,216 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,394 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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

4,224 ha reached on 23 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 area1.8 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.8 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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)
30 Sept	33.6 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Oct	34.4 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
2 Oct	34.4 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
3 Oct	34.3 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Oct	37.5 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Oct	36.8 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
6 Oct	35.9 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
7 Oct	36.4 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
8 Oct	33.2 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
9 Oct	34.6 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Oct	35.1 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Oct	33.7 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Oct	33.6 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
13 Oct	35.2 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Oct	36.7 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Oct after	36.7 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
16 Oct after	34.9 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
17 Oct after	34.3 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
18 Oct after	33.3 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Oct after	33.4 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Sept 2022

After · 21 Oct 2022

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 6 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 172 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 59: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak172 µg/m³

Days over the guideline21 days

PM10246 µg/m³

Optical depth1.08

WHO 15

212223242526272829301234567891011121314151617

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 · 176Every 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 23 September 2022 to 14 October 2022 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2022 to 9 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,199 hectares (42.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mocuba (4,224 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 October 2022 → 14 October 2022.
26 October 2026 Start date: 30 September 2022 → 23 September 2022.

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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What do you think is wrong?

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 30 September 2022 to 9 October 2022. 176 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