Mocuba fire, 10 October 2025 Mocuba, Derre
The fire started on 10 October 2025 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,200 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 339th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 121 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mocuba · 2021Mocuba · 2019Mocuba · 2022Mocuba · 2020
- Burnt area
- 5,200ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 10 Oct 2025 – 19 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 10 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 291
- in a single hotspot: 104 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 254MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 21 Oct.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,194 ha in 2016, 1,338 ha in 2017, 3,937 ha in 2018, 3,887 ha in 2019, 4,817 ha in 2020, 4,353 ha in 2021, 4,787 ha in 2022, 2,258 ha in 2023, 2,221 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,229 ha that had burned before.
- 4,289 ha Mocuba fire, September 2021 7,946 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,887 ha Mocuba fire, September 2019 21,775 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,812 ha Mocuba fire, September 2022 32,518 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,095 ha Mocuba fire, September 2020 86,463 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,586 ha Derre fire, September 2016 116,560 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,420 ha Mocuba fire, September 2018 10,600 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 378 ha Mocuba fire, September 2024 73,182 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 234 ha Mocuba fire, September 2018 116,289 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
-
Mocuba where it started4,931 ha reached on 3 Oct0.6 %
-
297 ha reached on 3 Oct0.1 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 600 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Oct | 32.4 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 11 Oct | 33.0 °C | 36 % | 28 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 12 Oct | 35.2 °C | 34 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Oct | 36.8 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Oct | 35.4 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Oct | 36.4 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Oct | 36.9 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Oct | 33.8 °C | 28 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 18 Oct | 32.3 °C | 39 % | 32 km/h | 1.6 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 19 Oct | 35.5 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Oct after | 32.0 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 24 |
| 21 Oct after | 28.5 °C | 52 % | 35 km/h | 1.8 mm | Low 10 |
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 12 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 65 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.5 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 · 291Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 86,463 haMocuba13 September 2020 · 22 days · 6 km away
- 116,560 haDerre2 September 2016 · 31 days · 16 km away
- 72,800 haDerre8 September 2025 · 33 days · 29 km away
- 116,289 haMocuba2 September 2018 · 28 days · 30 km away
- 47,144 haDerreSeptember 2022 · 20 days · 34 km away
- 72,301 haDerre21 August 2026 · 28 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mocuba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2025 and 19 October 2025: 10 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 5,200 hectares (52.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mocuba (4,931 ha, 0.6 %); Derre (297 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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. 291 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.
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.