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Manyoni fire, 4 October 2026 Manyoni

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2026, 23:29 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2026 in Manyoni, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,333 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 58th largest in Singida since 2016 (of 124 with a page). Number 98 in Tanzania in 2026, of 200.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
4,333ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
4 Oct 2026 – 15 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
4 Oct
2026
Heat detections
144
in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
838MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Oct 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct15 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

456789101113141516

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
48km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 779 ha in 2016, 2,710 ha in 2017, 2,644 ha in 2019, 25 ha in 2020, 43 ha in 2021, 342 ha in 2023, 37 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,810 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Manyoni where it started
    4,364 ha
    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)
4 Oct 30.9 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Oct 31.1 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Oct 31.7 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Oct 32.4 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Oct 32.4 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Oct 32.3 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Oct 31.4 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Oct 30.9 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Oct 31.0 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Oct 31.0 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 44
14 Oct 31.1 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 43
15 Oct 30.7 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Oct after 28.9 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Oct after 28.7 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Oct after 30.4 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Sept 2026
After · 22 Oct 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 13 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
234567891011121314151617
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 · 144Every 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 4 October 2026 and 15 October 2026: 12 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 4,333 hectares (43.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Manyoni (4,364 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Manyoni fire still active?
No fire detections since 16 Oct 2026, 23:29 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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
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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.