How long did the Pebane fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 October 2020 and 20 October 2020: 12 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 3,251 hectares (32.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Pebane (3,273 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 · 2020-10-09 → 2020-10-20

Pebane fire, October 2020 Pebane

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2020, 10:15 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2020 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,251 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 713th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 166 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pebane · 2018 Pebane · 2021 Pebane · 2026 Pebane · 2023

Burnt area: 3,251ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 9 Oct 2020 – 20 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 9 Oct; 2020
Heat detections: 107; in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 76MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 20 Oct 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct20 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

9 Oct 10 Oct 11 Oct 14 Oct 16 Oct 18 Oct 20 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

54km/h · peak gust

37%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,108 ha in 2016, 2,592 ha in 2018, 39 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,694 ha that had burned before.

1,878 ha Pebane fire, October 2018 3,574 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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

3,273 ha reached on 7 Oct

0.3 %

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)
9 Oct	30.1 °C	46 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
10 Oct	36.2 °C	37 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Oct	35.3 °C	39 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Oct	28.4 °C	69 %	42 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 7
13 Oct	27.4 °C	63 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 11
14 Oct	29.0 °C	48 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
15 Oct	27.3 °C	55 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Oct	28.7 °C	58 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 19
17 Oct	29.0 °C	53 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
18 Oct	30.3 °C	44 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
19 Oct	31.6 °C	44 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
20 Oct	34.3 °C	38 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Oct after	34.2 °C	43 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
22 Oct after	31.0 °C	47 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Oct after	29.3 °C	53 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
24 Oct after	30.1 °C	51 %	42 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Oct 2020

After · 27 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 · 107Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 October 2020 and 20 October 2020: 12 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 3,251 hectares (32.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Pebane (3,273 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 ↗

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 107 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