Pebane fire, 6 October 2025 Pebane
The fire started on 6 October 2025 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,510 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 170th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 842 with a page). Number 48 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Pebane · 2016Pebane · 2023Pebane · 2022Pebane · 2018
- Burnt area
- 9,510ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 6 Oct 2025 – 16 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 6 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 333
- in a single hotspot: 57 MW
- Danger at start
- 9
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 244MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,478 ha in 2016, 8,266 ha in 2017, 5,979 ha in 2018, 3,857 ha in 2019, 5,137 ha in 2020, 5,716 ha in 2021, 7,842 ha in 2022, 6,260 ha in 2023, 3,349 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,429 ha that had burned before.
- 5,538 ha Pebane fire, September 2016 10,511 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,489 ha Pebane fire, September 2023 19,106 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,188 ha Pebane fire, November 2022 8,560 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,968 ha Pebane fire, September 2018 6,535 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,735 ha Pebane fire, September 2020 12,694 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,715 ha Pebane fire, October 2017 5,856 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,455 ha Pebane fire, September 2021 6,940 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,342 ha Pebane fire, October 2017 4,121 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started9,576 ha reached on 3 Oct0.9 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Oct | 26.4 °C | 51 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 4 Oct | 25.7 °C | 61 % | 52 km/h | 3.7 mm | Very low 4 |
| 5 Oct | 27.0 °C | 52 % | 38 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 6 |
| 6 Oct | 30.2 °C | 49 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 7 Oct | 33.9 °C | 38 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 8 Oct | 32.2 °C | 44 % | 43 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 9 Oct | 30.1 °C | 55 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 10 Oct | 29.5 °C | 51 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 11 Oct | 31.4 °C | 52 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 12 Oct | 36.0 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Oct | 35.7 °C | 28 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 14 Oct | 32.8 °C | 40 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 15 Oct | 34.8 °C | 33 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Oct | 36.1 °C | 22 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 17 Oct after | 30.4 °C | 53 % | 46 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Oct after | 29.7 °C | 56 % | 41 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 19 Oct after | 32.0 °C | 46 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 20 Oct after | 30.6 °C | 52 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 21 Oct after | 28.4 °C | 53 % | 45 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 22 Oct after | 28.1 °C | 55 % | 49 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 23 Oct after | 28.0 °C | 45 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 24 Oct after | 31.3 °C | 46 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 25 Oct after | 34.9 °C | 39 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 26 Oct after | 37.7 °C | 28 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 27 Oct after | 38.0 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 28 Oct after | 35.2 °C | 39 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 29 Oct after | 32.9 °C | 47 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Oct after | 33.2 °C | 46 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 11 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 333Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pebane fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 October 2025 and 16 October 2025: 11 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 9,510 hectares (95.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Pebane (9,576 ha, 0.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 52 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
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.
Report an error
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. 333 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.
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.