Mogovolas fire, 18 August 2020 Mogovolas, Rapale, Murrupula
The fire started on 18 August 2020 in Mogovolas, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,645 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 48th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 28 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 9,645ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 18 Aug 2020 – 31 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 18 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 381
- in a single hotspot: 161 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 320MW
- 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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 2 Sept.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,095 ha in 2016, 3,088 ha in 2017, 2,614 ha in 2018, 4,476 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,408 ha that had burned before.
- 2,366 ha Mogovolas fire, September 2019 4,035 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,140 ha Mogovolas fire, September 2017 4,784 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,302 ha Murrupula fire, September 2018 3,508 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 977 ha Mogovolas fire, September 2016 3,286 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 931 ha Mogovolas fire, October 2019 5,178 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
-
Mogovolas where it started7,448 ha reached on 18 Aug1.6 %
-
1,795 ha reached on 25 Aug0.5 %
-
450 ha reached on 24 Aug0.1 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 25 hectares of built-up land and about 3,400 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Aug | 32.8 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 20 Aug | 29.1 °C | 43 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 21 Aug | 27.3 °C | 53 % | 34 km/h | 1.7 mm | Low 11 |
| 22 Aug | 26.2 °C | 59 % | 38 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 23 Aug | 25.0 °C | 48 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 24 Aug | 28.2 °C | 43 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 25 Aug | 31.5 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Aug | 32.7 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 27 Aug | 32.1 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 28 Aug | 31.5 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 29 Aug | 32.2 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 30 Aug | 31.8 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 31 Aug | 32.1 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 1 Sept after | 28.9 °C | 41 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Sept after | 27.1 °C | 50 % | 42 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 14 |
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.
Detections table · 381Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 51,629 haMogovolas1 September 2026 · 29 days · 9 km away
- 24,027 haMogovolas11 September 2024 · 19 days · 14 km away
- 29,696 haRapaleSeptember 2016 · 29 days · 28 km away
- 26,065 haRapaleSeptember 2025 · 24 days · 29 km away
- 17,139 haRapaleSeptember 2021 · 26 days · 34 km away
- 31,412 haRapaleSeptember 2017 · 17 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mogovolas fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 August 2020 to 31 August 2020 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2020 to 31 August 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,645 hectares (96.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Mogovolas (7,448 ha, 1.6 %); Rapale (1,795 ha, 0.5 %); Murrupula (450 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.
- Start date: 22 August 2020 → 18 August 2020.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 August 2020 to 31 August 2020. 381 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.
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.