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TZ · Tanzania · –

Kilosa fire, 20 October 2026 Mpwapwa, Kilosa

Out · last detection 30 Oct 2026, 11:21 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 20 October 2026 in Kilosa, Tanzania. It was active for 10 days, with 313 heat detections and an area with fire of about 3,962 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: Mpwapwa · 2025

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
≈ 3,962ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
20 Oct 2026 – 29 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
20 Oct
2026
Heat detections
313
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
312MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Oct29 Oct
30 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

25 Oct 2026 · 28 MW · 4 26 Oct 2026 · 4 MW · 1 27 Oct 2026 · 187 MW · 26 28 Oct 2026 · 609 MW · 80 29 Oct 2026 · 690 MW · 86 30 Oct 2026 · 351 MW · 44
25 Oct 27 Oct 29 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

31°high
53km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 1 Nov.

What happened to each town

  1. 2,128 ha reached on 20 Oct
    0.3 %
  2. Kilosa where it started
    1,834 ha reached on 20 Oct
    0.2 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
20 Oct 30.6 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
21 Oct 29.3 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
22 Oct 30.1 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
23 Oct 30.8 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Oct 30.0 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Oct 27.4 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Oct 24.6 °C 56 % 48 km/h 1.1 mm High 23
27 Oct 28.9 °C 36 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Oct 30.0 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Oct 30.1 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.8 mm High 30
30 Oct after 29.6 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Oct after 28.5 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
1 Nov after 28.1 °C 51 % 32 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 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 29 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1022 µg/m³
Optical depth0.39
18 Oct21 Oct24 Oct27 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 · 313Every 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 Tanzania

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kilosa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 20 October 2026 to 29 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 3,962 hectares with fire (39.6 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: Mpwapwa (2,128 ha, 0.3 %); Kilosa (1,834 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Kilosa fire still active?
No fire detections since 30 Oct 2026, 11:21 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.

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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 30 October 2026.
  1. Page published (≈ 3,962 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. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 3,962 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 313 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • 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.