How long did the Manyoni fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 August 2026 to 31 August 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2026 to 31 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,852 hectares (48.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Manyoni (4,894 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

TZ · Tanzania · 2026-08-19 → 2026-08-31

Manyoni fire, 19 August 2026 Manyoni

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2026, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 19 August 2026 in Manyoni, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,852 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 43th largest in Singida since 2016 (of 124 with a page). Number 81 in Tanzania in 2026, of 200.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Manyoni · 2026 Chunya · 2025 Manyoni · 2026 Manyoni · 2017

Burnt area: 4,852ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 19 Aug 2026 – 31 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 19 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 66; in a single hotspot: 79 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 51MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Aug31 Aug

Play back 31 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

19 Aug 22 Aug 24 Aug 27 Aug 29 Aug 31 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

46km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,798 ha in 2017, 266 ha in 2018, 664 ha in 2021, 847 ha in 2022, 1,047 ha in 2024, 651 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,849 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (49 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

Manyoni where it started

4,894 ha reached on 19 Aug

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 area0.21 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.21 hectares of 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)
19 Aug	27.3 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Aug	26.3 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Aug	27.0 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Aug	28.1 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 Aug	27.1 °C	38 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
24 Aug	28.2 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Aug	27.5 °C	33 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Aug	28.7 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Aug	27.3 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
28 Aug	27.3 °C	31 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Aug	27.2 °C	29 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
30 Aug	27.2 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Aug	27.6 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
1 Sept after	26.8 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept after	28.3 °C	28 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Sept after	28.4 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Sept after	29.9 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Sept after	31.1 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Sept after	28.7 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Sept after	28.1 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Sept after	26.5 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Sept after	26.7 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
10 Sept after	27.1 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Aug 2026

After · 7 Sept 2026

Before After

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 20 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³

Days over the guideline7 days

PM1034 µg/m³

Optical depth0.58

WHO 15

171819202122232425262728293031123

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 · 66Every 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

All fires in Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Manyoni fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 August 2026 to 31 August 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2026 to 31 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,852 hectares (48.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Manyoni (4,894 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 August 2026 to 31 August 2026. 66 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.

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.

Where it burned