How long did the Nhamatanda fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 July 2019 to 15 August 2019 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 August 2019 to 8 August 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,301 hectares (43.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nhamatanda (2,944 ha, 0.7 %); Gondola (1,374 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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 · 2019-07-28 → 2019-08-15

Nhamatanda fire, July 2019 Nhamatanda, Gondola

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2019, 11:55 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2019 in Nhamatanda, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,301 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 111th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 94 in Mozambique in 2019, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gondola · 2018 Gondola · 2026 Gorongosa · 2022 Gorongosa · 2023

Burnt area: 4,301ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 28 Jul 2019 – 15 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 28 Jul; 2019
Heat detections: 177; in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 115MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul15 Aug

Play back 15 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jul 1 Aug 4 Aug 6 Aug 7 Aug 8 Aug 12 Aug 14 Aug

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

32km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 10 Aug.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,997 ha in 2017, 1,812 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,591 ha that had burned before.

1,408 ha Gondola fire, August 2018 6,128 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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

Nhamatanda where it started

2,944 ha reached on 28 Jul

0.7 %
Gondola

1,374 ha reached on 28 Jul

0.5 %

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.

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 Aug	31.4 °C	45 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Aug	32.2 °C	31 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
6 Aug	32.5 °C	28 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Aug	31.5 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Aug	32.7 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Aug	29.5 °C	40 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Aug	28.1 °C	45 %	34 km/h	2.4 mm	Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Jul 2019

After · 22 Aug 2019

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 · 177Every 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 Nhamatanda fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 July 2019 to 15 August 2019 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 August 2019 to 8 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,301 hectares (43.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nhamatanda (2,944 ha, 0.7 %); Gondola (1,374 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 August 2019 → 15 August 2019.
26 October 2026 Start date: 4 August 2019 → 28 July 2019.

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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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 August 2019 to 8 August 2019. 177 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