How long did the Ribaué fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 October 2022 and 8 October 2022: 7 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 3,299 hectares (33.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ribaué (3,320 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % 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.

MZ · Mozambique · 2022-10-02 → 2022-10-08

Ribaué fire, October 2022 Ribaué

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2022, 10:54 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2022 in Ribaué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,299 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 321th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 168 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribaué · 2020 Ribaué · 2017 Ribaué · 2026 Ribaué · 2016

Burnt area: 3,299ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 2 Oct 2022 – 8 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 2 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 170; in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 210MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct8 Oct

Play back 8 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 3 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct 6 Oct 7 Oct 8 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

33°high

40km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 537 ha in 2016, 37 ha in 2017, 95 ha in 2019, 100 ha in 2020, 869 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,549 ha that had burned before.

100 ha Ribaué fire, August 2020 7,515 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

Ribaué where it started

3,320 ha reached on 27 Sept

0.5 %

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)
2 Oct	31.7 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
3 Oct	31.5 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Oct	32.4 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Oct	31.7 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 Oct	32.6 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Oct	32.0 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
8 Oct	31.9 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Oct after	31.3 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
10 Oct after	30.8 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
11 Oct after	30.6 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Oct after	30.8 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Oct after	31.6 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Oct after	32.3 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Oct after	31.1 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Oct after	31.1 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
17 Oct after	30.6 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Oct after	29.1 °C	39 %	28 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.

↔

Before · 25 Sept 2022

After · 15 Oct 2022

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 · 170Every 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 Ribaué fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 October 2022 and 8 October 2022: 7 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 3,299 hectares (33.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ribaué (3,320 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % 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

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. 170 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