Burned area
satellite only3,564ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 23 Nov 2024 – 26 Nov 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
TZ · Tanzania · –
Kilombero fire, November 2024 Kilombero
Out · last detection 27 Nov 2024, 22:56 UTC
The fire started on 23 November 2024 in Kilombero, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,564 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 74th largest in Morogoro since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 50 in Tanzania in 2024, of 70.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only4days
23 Nov 2024 to 26 Nov 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 27 Nov 2024, 22:56 UTC
+− cross-check
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.
Start
satellite only23 Nov 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 23 Nov 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only139
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 38 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 23 Nov 2024 – 26 Nov 2024
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only673MW
Total radiative power on 23 November 2024; hotspots that day: 91.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 23 Nov 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model29.0FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 14.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 23 Nov 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.1°C · 28% RH
High of 38.1 °C and minimum humidity of 28% on 23 November 2024; gusts of 34 km/h on 25 November 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 23 Nov 2024 – 26 Nov 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 3,564 ha
- Dates
- 23 Nov 2024 – 26 Nov 2024
- Name
- Kilombero
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/kilombero-2024-11?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire kilombero-2024-11.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-11-23 | 91 | 673 | 38.1 | 24.1 | 28 | 16 | 31.7 | 0.2 | 29 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-11-24 | 20 | 102 | 35.8 | 24.6 | 34 | 15.8 | 32 | 0.2 | 29.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-11-25 | 12 | 68 | 37.4 | 24.6 | 29 | 16.6 | 33.5 | 0 | 30.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-11-26 | 10 | 70 | 35.2 | 22.5 | 34 | 14.4 | 29.9 | 0.2 | 29.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-11-27 | 6 | 16 | 36 | 23.1 | 39 | 13.4 | 27.4 | 0.2 | 27.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-11-28 | 0 | 0 | 36.2 | 24.4 | 38 | 14.1 | 27 | 0.1 | 28.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-11-29 | 0 | 0 | 37.9 | 25.2 | 36 | 14.7 | 31.7 | 0.1 | 29.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-11-30 | 0 | 0 | 30.9 | 23.9 | 59 | 13.5 | 26.6 | 21.9 | 1.5 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 3,564ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 23 Nov 2024 – 26 Nov 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 23 Nov
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 139
- in a single hotspot: 38 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 186MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
23 Nov26 Nov
27 Nov 2024
How it evolved, day by day
23 Nov
24 Nov
25 Nov
26 Nov
27 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
38°high
34km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity
It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 21.9 mm on 30 Nov.
This area had burned before
43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,523 ha in 2016, 14 ha in 2018, 13 ha in 2019, 62 ha in 2020.
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
-
Kilombero where it started3,586 ha reached on 23 Nov0.3 %
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 2025Built-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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Nov | 38.1 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 29 |
| 24 Nov | 35.8 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 25 Nov | 37.4 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 26 Nov | 35.2 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 29 |
| 27 Nov after | 36.0 °C | 39 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Nov after | 36.2 °C | 38 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 29 Nov after | 37.9 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 30 Nov after | 30.9 °C | 59 % | 27 km/h | 21.9 mm | Very low 2 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 29.0, a minimum humidity of 28% and 14 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 24.
FWI at the start
29.0
Minimum humidity
28 %
Days without rain
14
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Kilombero fire, November 2024
3,564 ha
4 days
FWI 29.0
Min. humidity 28 %
Ulanga fire, September 2018
31,368 ha
35 days
FWI 29.0
Min. humidity 28 %
176 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Ulanga fire, November 2021
5,186 ha
10 days
FWI 30.7
Min. humidity 29 %
149 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 5.7 mm on 27 Nov.
Liwale fire, October 2018
5,747 ha
6 days
FWI 32.8
Min. humidity 27 %
41 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.1 mm on 22 Oct.
Kilombero fire, November 2021
14,870 ha
21 days
FWI 30.5
Min. humidity 29 %
178 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 28 Nov.
Liwale fire, November 2021
3,490 ha
6 days
FWI 31.2
Min. humidity 28 %
154 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 9 days
- median duration
- 5,060 ha
- median area
- 17 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 2.4 mm
- rain at the end (median; 12 of 24 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (3,564 ha against a median of 5,060 ha) and lasted 4 days, against 9 days.
In 12 of 24, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.4 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
21.9 mmfirst rain
30 Nov4 days after it ended
34km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 26 Nov, and on 30 Nov 21.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 12 of 24, with a median of 2.4 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 16 Nov 2024
After · 3 Dec 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · CopernicusOn 24 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1016 µg/m³
Optical depth0.38
21 Nov23 Nov25 Nov27 Nov29 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 · 139Every 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
- 9,426 haKilomberoNovember 2018 · 7 days · 9 km away
- 8,461 haKilomberoDecember 2025 · 5 days · 14 km away
- 10,802 haKilombero4 September 2020 · 19 days · 28 km away
- 19,348 haKilombero 17 October 2026 · 19 days · 34 km away
- 18,941 haUlanga3 September 2025 · 26 days · 37 km away
- 17,160 haKilombero14 October 2025 · 13 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kilombero fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 November 2024 and 26 November 2024: 4 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 3,564 hectares (35.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kilombero (3,586 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 24. Their median duration was 9 days and their median area 5,060 ha; 17 % went past 10,000 ha. In 12 of 24, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.4 mm.
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.
Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings
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.
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
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. 139 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.
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.