How long did the Muecate fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 October 2017 and 28 October 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 3,481 hectares (34.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Muecate (3,500 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 44 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2017-10-21 → 2017-10-28

Muecate fire, October 2017 Muecate

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2017, 10:16 UTC

The fire started on 21 October 2017 in Muecate, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,481 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 284th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 138 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Muecate · 2026 Muecate · 2026 Muecate · 2026 Mecubúri · 2025

Burnt area: 3,481ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 21 Oct 2017 – 28 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 21 Oct; 2017
Heat detections: 98; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 117MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct28 Oct

Play back 28 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

21 Oct 23 Oct 25 Oct 26 Oct 27 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

34°high

44km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 540 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

Muecate where it started

3,500 ha reached on 21 Oct

0.8 %

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)
21 Oct	32.1 °C	40 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
22 Oct	33.4 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Oct	33.0 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Oct	33.3 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Oct	33.3 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Oct	34.2 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Oct	33.8 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Oct	32.7 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Oct after	28.3 °C	59 %	49 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Oct 2017

After · 4 Nov 2017

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.

Detections table · 98Every 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 Muecate fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 October 2017 and 28 October 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 3,481 hectares (34.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Muecate (3,500 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 44 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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. 98 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.

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.

Where it burned