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Rapale fire, 14 September 2019 Rapale

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2019, 10:41 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2019 in Rapale, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,803 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 227th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 121 in Mozambique in 2019, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rapale · 2025Rapale · 2021Rapale · 2017Rapale · 2016

Burnt area
3,803ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
14 Sept 2019 – 21 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
14 Sept
2019
Heat detections
105
in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
135MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept21 Sept
20 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2019 · 78 MW · 7 15 Sept 2019 · 31 MW · 6 16 Sept 2019 · 419 MW · 21 17 Sept 2019 · 16 MW · 11 18 Sept 2019 · 157 MW · 28 19 Sept 2019 · 154 MW · 17 20 Sept 2019 · 89 MW · 8
14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
39km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,600 ha in 2016, 821 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,696 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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. Rapale where it started
    3,826 ha reached on 14 Sept
    1.0 %

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 area10.0 ha
Residents≈ 1,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 10.0 hectares of built-up land and about 1,600 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)
14 Sept 30.9 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept 29.3 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Sept 29.0 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept 28.8 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept 27.8 °C 41 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Sept 28.2 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Sept 28.7 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Sept 28.5 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Sept after 30.1 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Sept after 30.0 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Sept after 29.6 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Sept after 27.2 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.8 mm High 25
26 Sept after 24.0 °C 40 % 58 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
27 Sept after 24.0 °C 41 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Sept after 28.2 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Sept after 30.8 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Sept after 30.9 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Oct after 33.0 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2019
After · 28 Sept 2019

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 · 105Every 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 Rapale fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 September 2019 and 21 September 2019: 8 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 3,803 hectares (38.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Rapale (3,826 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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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. 105 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.