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Mocuba fire, 4 September 2023 Mocuba, Lugela

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2023, 10:59 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2023 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 43 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 40,394 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 37th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). The largest in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mocuba · 2022Mocuba · 2020Mocuba · 2018Lugela · 2022

Burnt area
40,394ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
43days
4 Sept 2023 – 16 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
4 Sept
2023
Heat detections
2,643
in a single hotspot: 128 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
772MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept16 Oct
16 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2023 · 7 MW · 1 5 Sept 2023 · 16 MW · 3 7 Sept 2023 · 98 MW · 15 8 Sept 2023 · 267 MW · 34 9 Sept 2023 · 46 MW · 6 10 Sept 2023 · 495 MW · 21 11 Sept 2023 · 357 MW · 36 12 Sept 2023 · 295 MW · 36 14 Sept 2023 · 89 MW · 11 15 Sept 2023 · 126 MW · 15 16 Sept 2023 · 1,747 MW · 140 17 Sept 2023 · 1,664 MW · 170 18 Sept 2023 · 5,902 MW · 312 19 Sept 2023 · 417 MW · 54 20 Sept 2023 · 865 MW · 80 21 Sept 2023 · 856 MW · 77 22 Sept 2023 · 496 MW · 69 23 Sept 2023 · 2,192 MW · 210 24 Sept 2023 · 1,343 MW · 97 25 Sept 2023 · 137 MW · 9 26 Sept 2023 · 274 MW · 39 27 Sept 2023 · 97 MW · 21 28 Sept 2023 · 95 MW · 11 29 Sept 2023 · 429 MW · 54 30 Sept 2023 · 603 MW · 66 1 Oct 2023 · 1,699 MW · 98 2 Oct 2023 · 439 MW · 19 4 Oct 2023 · 215 MW · 31 5 Oct 2023 · 687 MW · 52 6 Oct 2023 · 316 MW · 37 7 Oct 2023 · 2,224 MW · 193 8 Oct 2023 · 1,510 MW · 171 9 Oct 2023 · 402 MW · 26 10 Oct 2023 · 322 MW · 34 11 Oct 2023 · 1,444 MW · 105 12 Oct 2023 · 539 MW · 88 13 Oct 2023 · 175 MW · 35 14 Oct 2023 · 910 MW · 88 15 Oct 2023 · 616 MW · 38 16 Oct 2023 · 458 MW · 41
4 Sept 11 Sept 18 Sept 24 Sept 30 Sept 7 Oct 13 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

41°high
42km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.6 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,096 ha in 2016, 12,818 ha in 2017, 13,657 ha in 2018, 14,421 ha in 2019, 23,571 ha in 2020, 20,971 ha in 2021, 29,783 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 39,221 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 26% of the area of London (404 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

  1. Mocuba where it started
    23,014 ha reached on 4 Sept
    2.6 %
  2. Lugela
    17,593 ha reached on 5 Sept
    2.9 %

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 2025
Built-up area6.1 ha
Residents≈ 1,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.1 hectares of built-up land and about 1,400 residents (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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
4 Sept 32.0 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Sept 31.9 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Sept 33.0 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
7 Sept 31.2 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Sept 29.2 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
9 Sept 30.0 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Sept 32.9 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
11 Sept 33.7 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Sept 35.6 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
13 Sept 28.2 °C 56 % 40 km/h 4.1 mm Very low 4
14 Sept 27.9 °C 50 % 28 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 3
15 Sept 31.1 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
16 Sept 35.3 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Sept 36.8 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Sept 33.2 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Sept 31.2 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
20 Sept 33.8 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Sept 34.4 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Sept 34.3 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Sept 35.2 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept 35.5 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Sept 35.1 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Sept 35.4 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Sept 34.4 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Sept 34.7 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Sept 34.0 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Sept 35.9 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Oct 38.7 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Oct 31.9 °C 39 % 42 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 19
3 Oct 25.9 °C 52 % 34 km/h 11.1 mm Very low 3
4 Oct 30.1 °C 38 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Oct 33.2 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
6 Oct 36.1 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Oct 37.3 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Oct 38.6 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Oct 34.5 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Oct 34.8 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Oct 35.3 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Oct 37.4 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Oct 40.6 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Oct 40.6 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Oct 34.8 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Oct 36.1 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Oct after 34.0 °C 41 % 39 km/h 13.6 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2023
After · 23 Oct 2023

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 9 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 101 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak101 µg/m³
Days over the guideline24 days
PM10143 µg/m³
Optical depth1.41
910111213141516171819202122232425262728293012345678910111213141516171819
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 · 2,643Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

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 4 September 2023 to 16 October 2023 (43 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2023 to 16 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 40,394 hectares (403.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mocuba (23,014 ha, 2.6 %); Lugela (17,593 ha, 2.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 42 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 11 September 2023 → 4 September 2023.

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 September 2023 to 16 October 2023. 2,643 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 2025, 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.