Mocuba fire, 7 September 2025 Mocuba
The fire started on 7 September 2025 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,515 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 422th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 154 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mocuba · 2016Mocuba · 2024Mocuba · 2026Mocuba · 2022
- Burnt area
- 4,515ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 7 Sept 2025 – 24 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 7 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 140
- in a single hotspot: 185 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 98MW
- 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 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 26 Sept.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,414 ha in 2016, 1,451 ha in 2018, 1,009 ha in 2019, 521 ha in 2021, 1,322 ha in 2022, 2,082 ha in 2023, 208 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,923 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Mocuba where it started4,540 ha reached on 7 Sept0.5 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Sept | 33.9 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 8 Sept | 32.4 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Sept | 32.3 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Sept | 32.9 °C | 34 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Sept | 33.4 °C | 28 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Sept | 33.9 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 13 Sept | 31.7 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Sept | 32.8 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 15 Sept | 31.0 °C | 40 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 16 Sept | 34.9 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Sept | 36.5 °C | 23 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 18 Sept | 36.5 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 19 Sept | 32.9 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 20 Sept | 30.9 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Sept | 31.3 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Sept | 34.0 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 23 Sept | 36.6 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 24 Sept | 36.0 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 25 Sept after | 34.2 °C | 30 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Sept after | 27.8 °C | 59 % | 36 km/h | 3.0 mm | Low 7 |
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 22 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 101 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 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 · 140Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 73,182 haMocuba10 September 2024 · 12 days · 27 km away
- 505,288 haMocuba16 August 2026 · 45 days · 29 km away
- 32,518 haMocuba30 September 2022 · 14 days · 33 km away
- 116,289 haMocuba2 September 2018 · 28 days · 36 km away
- 32,862 haMocuba28 September 2022 · 33 days · 36 km away
- 40,394 haMocuba11 September 2023 · 36 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mocuba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 September 2025 and 24 September 2025: 18 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 4,515 hectares (45.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mocuba (4,540 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 41 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
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. 140 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.