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Morrumbala fire, 5 September 2016 Morrumbala, Milange

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2016, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2016 in Morrumbala, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 75,456 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 19th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 840 with a page). Number 4 in Mozambique in 2016, of 194.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Milange · 2019Milange · 2022Morrumbala · 2017Milange · 2020

Burnt area
75,456ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
5 Sept 2016 – 1 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
5 Sept
2016
Heat detections
3,962
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept1 Oct
2 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 2016 · 39 MW · 11 6 Sept 2016 · 310 MW · 43 7 Sept 2016 · 513 MW · 74 8 Sept 2016 · 1,277 MW · 183 9 Sept 2016 · 2,509 MW · 225 10 Sept 2016 · 3,098 MW · 276 11 Sept 2016 · 698 MW · 71 12 Sept 2016 · 863 MW · 68 13 Sept 2016 · 1,019 MW · 116 14 Sept 2016 · 1,414 MW · 100 15 Sept 2016 · 642 MW · 52 16 Sept 2016 · 1,527 MW · 200 17 Sept 2016 · 6,019 MW · 569 18 Sept 2016 · 5,580 MW · 618 19 Sept 2016 · 512 MW · 47 20 Sept 2016 · 98 MW · 20 21 Sept 2016 · 404 MW · 112 22 Sept 2016 · 642 MW · 113 23 Sept 2016 · 4,180 MW · 286 24 Sept 2016 · 1,936 MW · 186 25 Sept 2016 · 1,056 MW · 117 26 Sept 2016 · 1,064 MW · 88 27 Sept 2016 · 684 MW · 62 28 Sept 2016 · 1,481 MW · 146 29 Sept 2016 · 703 MW · 68 30 Sept 2016 · 345 MW · 41 1 Oct 2016 · 615 MW · 46 2 Oct 2016 · 363 MW · 24
5 Sept 9 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 Sept 25 Sept 29 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

38°high
42km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 3 Oct.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 48% of the area of London (755 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. Morrumbala where it started
    39,882 ha
    4.9 %
  2. Milange
    35,968 ha
    6.5 %

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 area47 ha
Residents≈ 25,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 47 hectares of built-up land and about 25,000 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)
5 Sept 32.3 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Sept 34.3 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Sept 33.5 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
8 Sept 35.5 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Sept 35.7 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Sept 36.1 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 33.2 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Sept 31.8 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept 33.9 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept 32.4 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept 33.6 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Sept 35.7 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Sept 36.8 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Sept 35.6 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept 32.9 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Sept 30.3 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.7 mm High 27
21 Sept 32.8 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Sept 34.2 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Sept 36.0 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept 36.5 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Sept 37.6 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Sept 33.3 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Sept 35.8 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Sept 37.0 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Sept 36.1 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Sept 35.9 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Oct 36.5 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Oct after 36.8 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Oct after 27.0 °C 45 % 50 km/h 3.9 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2016
After · 8 Oct 2016

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 · 0Every 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 Morrumbala fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2016 and 1 October 2016: 27 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 75,456 hectares (754.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Morrumbala (39,882 ha, 4.9 %); Milange (35,968 ha, 6.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 October 2016 → 1 October 2016.
  2. Start date: 29 August 2016 → 5 September 2016.
  3. Last day with fire: 1 October 2016 → 8 October 2016.
  4. Start date: 5 September 2016 → 29 August 2016.

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 8 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.