How long did the Mogovolas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 October 2026 to 26 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,768 hectares (157.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mogovolas (15,871 ha, 3.4 %).

Is the Mogovolas fire still active?

No fire detections since 27 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 45 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2026-10-05 → 2026-10-27

Mogovolas fire, 5 October 2026 Mogovolas

Dying down · last detection 27 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2026 in Mogovolas, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,768 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 22th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 49 in Mozambique in 2026, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mogovolas · 2020 Mogovolas · 2026 Moma · 2022 Larde · 2023

Is it still active?

No detections since 27 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 15,768ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 5 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 5 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 385; in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start: 10; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 126MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct27 Oct

Play back 27 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct 13 Oct 16 Oct 19 Oct 22 Oct 25 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

39°high

45km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,506 ha in 2016, 23 ha in 2019, 3,677 ha in 2020, 922 ha in 2021, 722 ha in 2022, 559 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,350 ha that had burned before.

3,327 ha Mogovolas fire, October 2020 5,298 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (158 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

Mogovolas where it started

15,871 ha reached on 5 Oct

3.4 %

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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
5 Oct	32.6 °C	43 %	33 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 10
6 Oct	34.5 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
7 Oct	35.3 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
8 Oct	34.7 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	High 24
9 Oct	33.7 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 17
10 Oct	33.7 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
11 Oct	34.1 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Oct	34.2 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 Oct	34.4 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Oct	34.3 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.8 mm	High 25
15 Oct	34.2 °C	35 %	27 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 20
16 Oct	33.9 °C	35 %	27 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 18
17 Oct	33.9 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
18 Oct	34.6 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Oct	36.8 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Oct	39.1 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
21 Oct	38.6 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
22 Oct	38.9 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
23 Oct	39.2 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
24 Oct	35.9 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.7 mm	High 30
25 Oct	34.1 °C	39 %	42 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
26 Oct	35.5 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
27 Oct	37.3 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
28 Oct after	39.6 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Sept 2026

After · 27 Oct 2026

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 16 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1043 µg/m³

Optical depth0.42

WHO 15

34567891011121314151617

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 · 385Every 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 Mogovolas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 October 2026 to 26 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,768 hectares (157.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mogovolas (15,871 ha, 3.4 %).
Is the Mogovolas fire still active?: No fire detections since 27 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 45 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Area: 11,063 → 15,768 ha.
27 October 2026 The page “Mogovolas, 13 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
25 October 2026 Area: 10,757 → 11,063 ha.

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.

Report an error

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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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 October 2026 to 26 October 2026. 385 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.