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MZ · Mozambique · –

Sanga fire, 21 October 2026 Sanga, Lago

Out · last detection 31 Oct 2026, 11:02 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 21 October 2026 in Sanga, Mozambique. It was active for 10 days, with 246 heat detections and an area with fire of about 3,024 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 2 municipalities.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Muembe · 2026Sanga · 2017

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Area with fire
≈ 3,024ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
21 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
21 Oct
2026
Heat detections
246
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
267MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct30 Oct
31 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

21 Oct 2026 · 273 MW · 48 22 Oct 2026 · 1,057 MW · 99 23 Oct 2026 · 479 MW · 55 24 Oct 2026 · 247 MW · 24 25 Oct 2026 · 88 MW · 8 26 Oct 2026 · 26 MW · 2 27 Oct 2026 · 104 MW · 8 28 Oct 2026 · 252 MW · 21 29 Oct 2026 · 138 MW · 17 30 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 31 Oct 2026 · 10 MW · 1
22 Oct 27 Oct 30 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

36°high
45km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.8 mm on 31 Oct.

What happened to each town

  1. Sanga where it started
    3,010 ha reached on 21 Oct
    0.2 %
  2. 14 ha reached on 21 Oct
    0.0 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
21 Oct 33.1 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Oct 36.0 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Oct 35.4 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Oct 33.5 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Oct 31.6 °C 31 % 45 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 43
26 Oct 31.8 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
27 Oct 31.7 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
28 Oct 33.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Oct 33.2 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
30 Oct 29.0 °C 48 % 45 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 20
31 Oct after 29.3 °C 44 % 25 km/h 3.8 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Oct 2026
After · 5 Nov 2026

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 23 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak63 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1066 µg/m³
Optical depth0.87
12 Oct15 Oct18 Oct21 Oct
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 · 246Every 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 Sanga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 21 October 2026 to 30 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 3,024 hectares with fire (30.2 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sanga (3,010 ha, 0.2 %); Lago (14 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Sanga fire still active?
No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 11:02 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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 · 7 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 October 2026 → 30 October 2026.
  2. Area: ≈ 3,332 → ≈ 3,024 ha.
  3. Start date: 20 October 2026 → 21 October 2026.
  4. Area: ≈ 3,192 → ≈ 3,332 ha.
  5. Start date: 19 October 2026 → 20 October 2026.
  6. Area: ≈ 3,094 → ≈ 3,192 ha.
  7. Start date: 14 October 2026 → 19 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 3,024 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 246 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.