How long did the Ribaué fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2025 to 29 September 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2025 to 28 September 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,991 hectares (59.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ribaué (6,031 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 · 2025-09-10 → 2025-09-29

Ribaué fire, 10 September 2025 Ribaué

Out · last detection 29 Sept 2025, 11:15 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2025 in Ribaué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,991 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 109th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 97 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribaué · 2020 Ribaué · 2018 Ribaué · 2022 Ribaué · 2017

Burnt area: 5,991ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 10 Sept 2025 – 29 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 10 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 188; in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 101MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept29 Sept

Play back 29 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 21 Sept 24 Sept 29 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

34°high

43km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 743 ha in 2016, 3,498 ha in 2017, 2,169 ha in 2018, 2,217 ha in 2019, 3,105 ha in 2020, 1,128 ha in 2021, 2,045 ha in 2022, 140 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,422 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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

6,031 ha reached on 10 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 2025

Built-up area3.9 ha

Residents≈ 550

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.9 hectares of built-up land and about 550 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
10 Sept	31.9 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
11 Sept	30.6 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Sept	30.8 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
13 Sept	30.7 °C	27 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Sept	31.3 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Sept	29.3 °C	39 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
16 Sept	30.8 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Sept	32.9 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Sept	33.7 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Sept	31.5 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Sept	29.4 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
21 Sept	30.5 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Sept	33.3 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
23 Sept	33.4 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Sept	31.6 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Sept	32.1 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Sept	29.3 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Sept	26.6 °C	51 %	39 km/h	0.6 mm	High 26
28 Sept	30.8 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
29 Sept	32.6 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
30 Sept after	31.1 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Oct after	26.5 °C	52 %	51 km/h	2.4 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Sept 2025

After · 6 Oct 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 20 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak55 µg/m³

Days over the guideline6 days

PM1059 µg/m³

Optical depth0.71

WHO 15

151617181920212223242526272829301

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 188Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2025 to 29 September 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2025 to 28 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,991 hectares (59.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ribaué (6,031 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 28 September 2025 → 29 September 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 17 September 2025 → 10 September 2025.

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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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2025 to 28 September 2025. 188 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned