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Manyoni fire, 23 August 2025 Manyoni

Out · last detection 2 Sept 2025, 11:23 UTC

The fire started on 23 August 2025 in Manyoni, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,698 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Singida since 2016 (of 124 with a page). Number 73 in Tanzania in 2025, of 161.

Burnt area
4,698ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
23 Aug 2025 – 2 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Aug
2025
Heat detections
198
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Sept 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Aug2 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

23242526272829303112

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
49km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,839 ha in 2016, 2,346 ha in 2017, 129 ha in 2018, 541 ha in 2019, 1,858 ha in 2020, 1,262 ha in 2022, 2,670 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,432 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Manyoni where it started
    4,735 ha reached on 23 Aug
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
23 Aug 26.8 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Aug 28.0 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Aug 28.9 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Aug 29.4 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Aug 28.0 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Aug 30.3 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Aug 29.2 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Aug 27.7 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
31 Aug 28.5 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Sept 29.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Sept 28.9 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Sept after 29.1 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept after 29.4 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept after 29.7 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Sept after 30.5 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept after 29.8 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Sept after 29.5 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Sept after 30.1 °C 29 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Sept after 31.4 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Sept after 30.7 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept after 29.2 °C 19 % 44 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 · 16 Aug 2025
After · 9 Sept 2025

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 3 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1024 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
212223242526272829303112345
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 · 198Every 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 Manyoni fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 August 2025 and 2 September 2025: 11 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 4,698 hectares (47.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Manyoni (4,735 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.