Burned area
satellite only3,477ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 7 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ZW · Zimbabwe · –
Makonde fire, 31 October 2026 Mbire, Makonde
Out · last detection 6 Nov 2026, 23:37 UTC
The fire started on 31 October 2026 in Makonde, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,477 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
Number 52 in Zimbabwe in 2026, of 415.
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.
The power measured by the satellite is low (22.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mbire · 2022Mbire · 2019Makonde · 2022Makonde · 2018
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-11matches 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 only8days
31 Oct 2026 to 7 Nov 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 6 Nov 2026, 23:37 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 only31 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only89
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 22 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 7 Nov 2026
+− 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 only177MW
Total radiative power on 2 November 2026; hotspots that day: 29.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026
+− 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
model44.9FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 2.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− 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
model38.7°C · 20% RH
High of 38.7 °C and minimum humidity of 20% on 7 November 2026; gusts of 43 km/h on 4 November 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 7 Nov 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− 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 4 November 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
-
logName: Makonde → Mbire.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
logLast day with fire: 3 November 2026 → 7 November 2026.
-
logName: Mbire → Makonde.
-
logName: Makonde → Mbire.
-
logName: Mbire → Makonde.
-
logArea: 2,644 → 3,477 ha.
-
logArea: 2,328 → 2,644 ha.
-
logArea: 2,081 → 2,328 ha.
-
logPage published (2,081 ha).
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/makonde-2026-10-9?v=2026-11-11A 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 makonde-2026-10-9.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-31 | 2 | 5 | 33.2 | 23 | 25 | 21.6 | 42.8 | 0 | 44.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-01 | 7 | 34 | 35.2 | 22.4 | 22 | 16.9 | 38.2 | 0 | 51.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-02 | 29 | 177 | 36.9 | 23.9 | 18 | 18.9 | 38.5 | 0 | 60.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-03 | 24 | 150 | 37.4 | 24.6 | 20 | 18 | 39.2 | 0 | 59.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-04 | 1 | 5 | 37.5 | 26.8 | 21 | 19.3 | 43.2 | 0 | 66.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-05 | 19 | 65 | 37.2 | 27.1 | 22 | 19.1 | 42.8 | 0 | 65.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-06 | 7 | 23 | 37.4 | 27.2 | 23 | 20.1 | 43.2 | 0 | 63.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-07 | 0 | 0 | 38.7 | 28 | 20 | 13.9 | 32 | 0 | 44.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-08 | 0 | 0 | 39.5 | 27.2 | 21 | 27.2 | 54.7 | 0.2 | 53.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-09 | 0 | 0 | 35.6 | 26.7 | 27 | 24.3 | 48.6 | 0 | 53.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-10 | 0 | 0 | 35.4 | 24.8 | 28 | 21.8 | 41 | 0.9 | 50.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-11 | 0 | 0 | 35.6 | 24.8 | 23 | 19.9 | 37.8 | 0 | 36.6 | alto | 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), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 3,477ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 31 Oct 2026 – 7 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 89
- in a single hotspot: 22 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 65MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
31 Oct7 Nov
6 Nov 2026
How it evolved, day by day
31 Oct
2 Nov
4 Nov
6 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
39°high
43km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 807 ha in 2016, 1,864 ha in 2017, 1,028 ha in 2018, 1,135 ha in 2019, 629 ha in 2020, 1,395 ha in 2021, 1,931 ha in 2022, 1,167 ha in 2023, 337 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,387 ha that had burned before.
- 1,038 ha Mbire fire, October 2022 2,489 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,002 ha Mbire fire, September 2019 2,153 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 893 ha Makonde fire, September 2022 1,823 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 791 ha Makonde fire, August 2018 1,759 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 747 ha Mbire fire, November 2017 1,084 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 661 ha Mbire fire, November 2017 1,647 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 584 ha Makonde fire, October 2020 2,189 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 572 ha Makonde fire, September 2016 2,983 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
2,033 ha reached on 1 Nov0.4 %
-
Makonde where it started1,460 ha reached on 31 Oct0.2 %
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.
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 | 33.2 °C | 25 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Nov | 35.2 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Nov | 36.9 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 3 Nov | 37.4 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 4 Nov | 37.5 °C | 21 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 5 Nov | 37.2 °C | 22 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 6 Nov | 37.4 °C | 23 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 7 Nov | 38.7 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 8 Nov after | 39.5 °C | 21 % | 55 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Nov after | 35.6 °C | 27 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 10 Nov after | 35.4 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.9 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 11 Nov after | 35.6 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 24 Oct 2026
After · 11 Nov 2026
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 9 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak33 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1040 µg/m³
Optical depth0.81
WHO 15
29 Oct1 Nov4 Nov7 Nov10 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 · 89Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Makonde fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 October 2026 to 7 November 2026 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2026 to 6 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,477 hectares (34.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mbire (2,033 ha, 0.4 %); Makonde (1,460 ha, 0.2 %).
- Is the Makonde fire still active?
- No fire detections since 6 Nov 2026, 23:37 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, class Extreme.
- 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 · 9 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 4 November 2026.
- Name: Makonde → Mbire.
- Last day with fire: 3 November 2026 → 7 November 2026.
- Name: Mbire → Makonde.
- Name: Makonde → Mbire.
- Name: Mbire → Makonde.
- Area: 2,644 → 3,477 ha.
- Area: 2,328 → 2,644 ha.
- Area: 2,081 → 2,328 ha.
- Page published (2,081 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
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 6 November 2026. 89 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.
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.