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Pebane fire, 6 October 2017 Pebane

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2017, 10:34 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2017 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,742 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 579th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 112 in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pebane · 2016Pebane · 2024Pebane · 2026Pebane · 2025

Burnt area
3,742ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
6 Oct 2017 – 11 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Oct
2017
Heat detections
129
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
154MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

11 Oct 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct11 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 2017 · 73 MW · 11 7 Oct 2017 · 23 MW · 5 8 Oct 2017 · 110 MW · 6 9 Oct 2017 · 351 MW · 24 10 Oct 2017 · 161 MW · 31 11 Oct 2017 · 207 MW · 22
6 Oct 7 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 10 Oct 11 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

36°high
46km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 14 Oct.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 895 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (37 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. Pebane where it started
    3,763 ha reached on 3 Oct
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
6 Oct 33.0 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
7 Oct 32.5 °C 44 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
8 Oct 33.9 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Oct 34.0 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Oct 35.0 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Oct 36.2 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Oct after 29.6 °C 60 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
13 Oct after 29.0 °C 47 % 48 km/h 0.9 mm High 24
14 Oct after 26.4 °C 54 % 47 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Sept 2017
After · 18 Oct 2017

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 · 129Every 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 Pebane fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 October 2017 and 11 October 2017: 6 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 3,742 hectares (37.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pebane (3,763 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 129 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.