Molumbo fire, September 2025 Molumbo, Lugela
The fire started on 4 September 2025 in Molumbo, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,102 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 352th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 128 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,102ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 4 Sept 2025 – 22 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 4 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 182
- in a single hotspot: 33 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 73MW
- 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 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 26 Sept.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,356 ha in 2016, 3,076 ha in 2017, 2,781 ha in 2018, 2,821 ha in 2020, 367 ha in 2021, 2,708 ha in 2022, 563 ha in 2023, 1,478 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,947 ha that had burned before.
- 1,713 ha Lugela fire, September 2017 40,697 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,652 ha Molumbo fire, October 2022 3,774 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,131 ha Molumbo fire, September 2018 3,813 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,055 ha Molumbo fire, September 2022 4,300 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 719 ha Molumbo fire, September 2018 3,855 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
-
Molumbo where it started5,130 ha reached on 3 Sept1.2 %
-
9 ha reached on 12 Sept0.0 %
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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Sept | 31.8 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Sept | 30.0 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Sept | 32.1 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Sept | 31.4 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 8 Sept | 30.7 °C | 24 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Sept | 30.6 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Sept | 31.5 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Sept | 31.1 °C | 27 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 12 Sept | 31.5 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 13 Sept | 29.8 °C | 28 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Sept | 30.2 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Sept | 28.0 °C | 46 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 25 |
| 16 Sept | 32.1 °C | 28 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Sept | 33.5 °C | 24 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 18 Sept | 33.6 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 19 Sept | 30.2 °C | 44 % | 38 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 34 |
| 20 Sept | 28.7 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Sept | 29.3 °C | 36 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Sept | 32.1 °C | 32 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 28 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 25 Sept after | 32.4 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 26 Sept after | 26.8 °C | 51 % | 34 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 25 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 104 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 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 · 182Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Molumbo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 September 2025 and 22 September 2025: 19 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 5,102 hectares (51.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Molumbo (5,130 ha, 1.2 %); Lugela (9 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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. 182 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.