How long did the Pebane fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 September 2020 to 4 October 2020 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2020 to 28 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,133 hectares (81.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Pebane (8,180 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2020-09-09 → 2020-10-04

Pebane fire, 9 September 2020 Pebane

Out · last detection 4 Oct 2020, 10:15 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2020 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,133 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 202th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 34 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pebane · 2017 Pebane · 2022 Pebane · 2024 Pebane · 2021

Burnt area: 8,133ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 9 Sept 2020 – 4 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 9 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 468; in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 200MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept4 Oct

Play back 4 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 Sept 27 Sept 2 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

38°high

47km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 12 Oct.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 729 ha in 2016, 1,172 ha in 2017, 2,090 ha in 2018, 1,743 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,746 ha that had burned before.

64 ha Pebane fire, October 2017 3,974 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (81 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

Pebane where it started

8,180 ha reached on 9 Sept

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area0.30 ha

Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.30 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
9 Sept	28.4 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
10 Sept	27.1 °C	51 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
11 Sept	29.3 °C	45 %	39 km/h	0.4 mm	High 22
12 Sept	29.0 °C	51 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
13 Sept	30.8 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
14 Sept	33.2 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Sept	36.5 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
16 Sept	35.3 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Sept	36.0 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
18 Sept	33.9 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Sept	33.1 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Sept	34.2 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Sept	34.7 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Sept	30.5 °C	43 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Sept	28.9 °C	50 %	47 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
24 Sept	29.1 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Sept	33.6 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
26 Sept	37.4 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
27 Sept	38.0 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
28 Sept	37.7 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
29 Sept	36.9 °C	21 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
30 Sept	34.6 °C	33 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 Oct	35.8 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Oct	37.4 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
3 Oct	34.8 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
4 Oct	35.2 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
5 Oct after	31.6 °C	46 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Oct after	30.9 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
7 Oct after	29.1 °C	46 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Oct after	30.5 °C	43 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Oct after	33.3 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Oct after	37.6 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Oct after	38.0 °C	28 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Oct after	30.9 °C	54 %	41 km/h	3.0 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Sept 2020

After · 11 Oct 2020

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 · 468Every 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 Pebane fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 September 2020 to 4 October 2020 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2020 to 28 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,133 hectares (81.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Pebane (8,180 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 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: 28 September 2020 → 4 October 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 13 September 2020 → 9 September 2020.

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 do you think is wrong?

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 13 September 2020 to 28 September 2020. 468 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned