Skip to content
worldfires
en
ZW · Zimbabwe · –

Kariba fire, October 2026 Kariba

Burning · last detection 4 Nov 2026, 23:20 UTC

The fire started on 31 October 2026 in Kariba, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,483 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 165 in Zimbabwe in 2026, of 403.

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: Kariba · 2021Kariba · 2023Kariba · 2020Kariba · 2021

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 4 Nov 2026, 23:20 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Wind, humidity and rain for the next 72 h

Burnt area
1,483ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
31 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Oct
2026
Heat detections
29
in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
64MW
detected power per day, on average

The next 72 hours

The wind is blowing from the north-east and pushing to the south-west; no sharp shifts are expected until Sun 8, 08:00.

ECMWF IFS 0.25° at the centre of the fire · computed 5 Nov 2026, 05:53 UTC

Thu 5, 20:00 – Fri 6, 07:00, local time

No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 42 %

Nights usually moisten the vegetation and the fire calms down. Tonight humidity does not reach 55 %, so it may stay active in the small hours.

Fri 6, 20:00 – Sat 7, 07:00, local time

No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 42 %

Nights usually moisten the vegetation and the fire calms down. Tonight humidity does not reach 55 %, so it may stay active in the small hours.

Checked, no warning: no wind shifts of more than 60° no useful rain expected (0.0 mm in 72 h)

Hour by hour, local time

Tap the strip to see each hour

Mean wind Gusts where it blows to Relative humidity Night (8 pm to 8 am) Rain (mm) · chance in %

Where is it blowing? The next 48 h

geoBoundaries/Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT www.zimstat.co.zw) Central Statistics Office, OCHA ROSEA (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO))

At this hour

Places the fan reaches

    Is it heading my way?

    We compare your point with the fan for each hour. Your location never leaves your device.

    or tap the map

    This is not an official warning. It is a global model forecast with cells of about 25 km, at the centre of the fire: it cannot see valley winds or the winds the fire itself creates. The fan shows where the wind blows, not where the fire will spread. If in doubt, follow what the authorities say.

    Forecast: ECMWF IFS 0.25° (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), served by our own Open-Meteo instance; the chance of rain comes from the ECMWF ensemble. Variables: wind and gusts at 10 m, wind at 850 hPa, relative humidity and temperature at 2 m, rain. Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).

    Fire: GWIS / Copernicus (reconstructed from VIIRS) (CC BY 4.0); hotspots from the last 24 h: VIIRS from NASA FIRMS. Boundaries: geoBoundaries/Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT www.zimstat.co.zw) Central Statistics Office, OCHA ROSEA (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)).

    How it is worked out: wind shift = a change of more than 60° in 6 h or less, with at least 15 km/h before and after; no overnight recovery = peak humidity between 8 pm and 8 am stays below 55 %; useful rain = 2 mm or more in 6 h. The fan opens 18° plus however much the wind varies within ±3 h and reaches 25 km beyond the edge of the fire: one model cell, not a rate of spread. Methodology

    Where it burned

    HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Oct4 Nov
    4 Nov 2026

    How it evolved, day by day

    31 Oct 2026 · 1 MW · 1 1 Nov 2026 · 4 MW · 3 2 Nov 2026 · 191 MW · 15 3 Nov 2026 · 63 MW · 9 4 Nov 2026 · 62 MW · 6
    31 Oct 1 Nov 2 Nov 3 Nov 4 Nov

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

    The weather it burned in

    37°high
    38km/h · peak gust
    14%lowest humidity

    It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

    This area had burned before

    No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

    How big is it?

    10 km
    It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (15 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. Kariba where it started
      1,492 ha reached on 31 Oct
      0.2 %

    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 area< 0.1 ha
    Residents< 20

    Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

    Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
    31 Oct 34.0 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
    1 Nov 36.0 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
    2 Nov 36.6 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
    3 Nov 36.9 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
    4 Nov 37.2 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
    5 Nov after 37.2 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

    Before and after, from space

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

    Before · 24 Oct 2026
    After · 4 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 29 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

    PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
    Days over the guideline1 day
    PM1032 µg/m³
    Optical depth0.60
    29 Oct31 Oct2 Nov
    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 · 29Every 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 Zimbabwe

    Frequently asked questions

    How long did the Kariba fire last?
    According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 October 2026 to 4 November 2026 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2026 to 3 November 2026.
    How much area did it burn?
    The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,483 hectares (14.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
    Which municipalities burned?
    The fire only entered Kariba (1,492 ha, 0.2 %).
    Is the Kariba fire still active?
    Yes: satellites detected fire on 4 Nov 2026, 23:20 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
    What was the weather like?
    During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
    What weather is expected at the fire over the next 72 hours?
    The wind is blowing from the north-east and pushing to the south-west; no sharp shifts are expected until Sun 8, 08:00. No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 42 % (Thu 5, 20:00 – Fri 6, 07:00). No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 42 % (Fri 6, 20:00 – Sat 7, 07:00). Times are local time at the fire. ECMWF IFS forecast (Open-Meteo) computed 5 Nov 2026, 05:53 UTC; this is not an official warning.
    Where does this data come from?
    From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 4 November 2026.
    1. Page published (1,483 ha).

    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.

    Report an error
    What do you think is wrong?

    We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

    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 1 November 2026 to 3 November 2026. 29 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
    • We have not matched this page with any official record.
    • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
    • 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.