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MZ · Mozambique · –

Murrupula fire, 22 August 2026 Gilé, Murrupula

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2026, 10:45 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2026 in Murrupula, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,820 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 44 in Mozambique in 2026, of 571.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…
Burnt area
19,820ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
22 Aug 2026 – 17 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
22 Aug
2026
Heat detections
610
in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
235MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug17 Sept
18 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2026 · 84 MW · 12 23 Aug 2026 · 71 MW · 13 24 Aug 2026 · 401 MW · 41 25 Aug 2026 · 81 MW · 9 27 Aug 2026 · 80 MW · 7 28 Aug 2026 · 7 MW · 1 29 Aug 2026 · 41 MW · 3 30 Aug 2026 · 115 MW · 10 31 Aug 2026 · 728 MW · 80 1 Sept 2026 · 986 MW · 106 2 Sept 2026 · 216 MW · 19 3 Sept 2026 · 534 MW · 17 4 Sept 2026 · 518 MW · 88 5 Sept 2026 · 233 MW · 35 6 Sept 2026 · 189 MW · 15 7 Sept 2026 · 51 MW · 6 10 Sept 2026 · 5 MW · 1 11 Sept 2026 · 54 MW · 12 12 Sept 2026 · 224 MW · 20 13 Sept 2026 · 88 MW · 13 14 Sept 2026 · 150 MW · 17 15 Sept 2026 · 656 MW · 37 16 Sept 2026 · 199 MW · 28 17 Sept 2026 · 92 MW · 13 18 Sept 2026 · 67 MW · 7
22 Aug 28 Aug 1 Sept 7 Sept 14 Sept

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

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (28 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

33°high
53km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,313 ha in 2016, 9,966 ha in 2017, 7,112 ha in 2018, 9,541 ha in 2019, 4,652 ha in 2020, 9,056 ha in 2021, 6,779 ha in 2022, 7,729 ha in 2023, 8,369 ha in 2024, 13,461 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19,571 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (198 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. 16,299 ha
    1.8 %
  2. Murrupula where it started
    3,616 ha
    1.2 %

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)
22 Aug 30.5 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Aug 31.3 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Aug 28.1 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Aug 28.0 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
26 Aug 26.5 °C 50 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
27 Aug 26.9 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.7 mm High 29
28 Aug 27.5 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.7 mm High 22
29 Aug 27.4 °C 49 % 30 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
30 Aug 29.8 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Aug 31.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Sept 30.9 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Sept 29.9 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Sept 28.9 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 32.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Sept 31.4 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Sept 31.4 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept 30.0 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 48
8 Sept 24.2 °C 53 % 41 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 18
9 Sept 25.9 °C 54 % 34 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 15
10 Sept 29.0 °C 53 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm Low 10
11 Sept 30.2 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Sept 31.1 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept 30.7 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept 30.5 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Sept 32.9 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Sept 28.7 °C 43 % 53 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 31.3 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
18 Sept after 32.6 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Sept after 30.6 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept after 30.8 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Sept after 31.8 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
22 Sept after 29.9 °C 45 % 24 km/h 4.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2026
After · 24 Sept 2026

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 3 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 119 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak119 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10121 µg/m³
Optical depth1.00
20 Aug27 Aug3 Sept10 Sept17 Sept
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 · 610Every 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 Murrupula fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2026 to 17 September 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2026 to 10 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,820 hectares (198.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gilé (16,299 ha, 1.8 %); Murrupula (3,616 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Name: Gilé → Murrupula.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 August 2026 to 10 September 2026. 610 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.