Skip to content
worldfires
en
MZ · Mozambique · →

Molumbo fire, September 2017 Molumbo

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2017, 10:47 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2017 in Molumbo, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,714 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 582th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 113 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Namarrói · 2016Lugela · 2026Lugela · 2024Lugela · 2017

Burnt area
3,714ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
11 Sept 2017 – 18 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Sept
2017
Heat detections
145
in a single hotspot: 147 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
198MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept18 Sept
19 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

11 Sept 2017 · 41 MW · 8 12 Sept 2017 · 28 MW · 9 13 Sept 2017 · 561 MW · 33 14 Sept 2017 · 159 MW · 9 15 Sept 2017 · 144 MW · 19 16 Sept 2017 · 47 MW · 7 17 Sept 2017 · 697 MW · 23 18 Sept 2017 · 102 MW · 13 19 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 1
11 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
35km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 103 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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. Molumbo where it started
    3,739 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.9 %

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 2015
Built-up area9.4 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 9.4 hectares of built-up land and about 650 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
11 Sept 29.0 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Sept 29.5 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Sept 30.5 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept 31.0 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Sept 29.7 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Sept 29.5 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept 32.6 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 30.5 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Sept after 28.7 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Sept after 31.4 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept after 28.0 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept after 28.9 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Sept after 31.0 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Sept after 26.1 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept after 29.2 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Sept after 32.9 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Sept after 33.0 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Sept after 31.7 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Sept 2017
After · 25 Sept 2017

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 · 145Every 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 Molumbo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 September 2017 and 18 September 2017: 8 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 3,714 hectares (37.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Molumbo (3,739 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 35 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.

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?

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 145 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 2015, 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.