Ribaué fire, 6 September 2017 Ribaué, Gilé, Alto Molocue
The fire started on 6 September 2017 in Ribaué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 53,154 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). The largest in Mozambique in 2017, of 196.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 53,154ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 6 Sept 2017 – 22 Sept 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- districts
- Started on
- 6 Sept
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 2,962
- in a single hotspot: 144 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.0GW
- 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 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 28 Sept.
This area had burned before
49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 26,531 ha in 2016.
- 7,316 ha Ribaué fire, September 2016 63,932 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,150 ha Ribaué fire, September 2016 12,660 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,573 ha Alto Molocue fire, September 2016 6,195 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
-
Ribaué where it started29,836 ha reached on 6 Sept4.8 %
-
20,924 ha reached on 7 Sept2.3 %
-
2,646 ha reached on 7 Sept0.4 %
-
38 ha reached on 7 Sept0.0 %
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.
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 Sept | 28.3 °C | 40 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Sept | 29.6 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 8 Sept | 30.8 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 9 Sept | 30.2 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Sept | 29.4 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 11 Sept | 30.1 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 12 Sept | 29.9 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 13 Sept | 31.1 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Sept | 31.7 °C | 24 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 15 Sept | 30.9 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 16 Sept | 30.7 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Sept | 32.9 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 18 Sept | 31.6 °C | 34 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 19 Sept | 31.8 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 20 Sept | 32.0 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Sept | 28.9 °C | 43 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Sept | 30.4 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 23 Sept after | 32.1 °C | 26 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 24 Sept after | 28.1 °C | 39 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 25 Sept after | 30.0 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Sept after | 32.4 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 27 Sept after | 32.6 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 28 Sept after | 30.3 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 4.2 mm | Low 10 |
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.
Detections table · 2,962Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 63,932 haRibaué9 September 2016 · 22 days · 15 km away
- 90,638 haGilé27 September 2022 · 18 days · 21 km away
- 145,344 haRibaué16 August 2026 · 43 days · 28 km away
- 70,839 haGilé8 September 2024 · 14 days · 28 km away
- 31,968 haGilé13 September 2018 · 17 days · 34 km away
- 43,808 haMurrupula9 September 2025 · 22 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ribaué fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2017 and 22 September 2017: 17 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 53,154 hectares (531.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Ribaué (29,836 ha, 4.8 %); Gilé (20,924 ha, 2.3 %); Alto Molocue (2,646 ha, 0.4 %); Murrupula (38 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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
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.
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; 6 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,962 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.