How long did the Mbarali fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 July 2016 and 2 August 2016: 4 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 3,787 hectares (37.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mbarali (3,808 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 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 · 2016-07-30 → 2016-08-02

Mbarali fire, 30 July 2016 Mbarali

Out · last detection 3 Aug 2016, 22:19 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2016 in Mbarali, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,787 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 89th largest in Mbeya since 2016 (of 147 with a page). Number 106 in Tanzania in 2016, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mbarali · 2021 Iringa · 2026 Iringa · 2025 Mbarali · 2020

Burnt area: 3,787ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 30 Jul 2016 – 2 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Jul; 2016
Heat detections: 91; in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 142MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul2 Aug

Play back 3 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug 3 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

30°high

32km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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

Mbarali where it started

3,808 ha reached on 30 Jul

0.3 %

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	Danger (FWI)
30 Jul	28.4 °C	22 %	32 km/h	High 37
31 Jul	30.4 °C	18 %	31 km/h	Very high 41
1 Aug	29.7 °C	24 %	28 km/h	Very high 38
2 Aug	30.3 °C	22 %	31 km/h	Very high 42
3 Aug after	28.5 °C	25 %	20 km/h	High 37
4 Aug after	29.7 °C	26 %	34 km/h	Very high 44
5 Aug after	28.0 °C	29 %	39 km/h	Very high 42
6 Aug after	26.7 °C	28 %	42 km/h	Very high 43
7 Aug after	28.3 °C	27 %	37 km/h	Very high 42
8 Aug after	29.1 °C	29 %	28 km/h	High 38
9 Aug after	29.5 °C	28 %	37 km/h	Very high 40
10 Aug after	28.5 °C	29 %	31 km/h	Very high 39
11 Aug after	28.3 °C	28 %	28 km/h	Very high 39
12 Aug after	29.1 °C	26 %	23 km/h	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jul 2016

After · 9 Aug 2016

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.

Detections table · 91Every 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 Mbarali fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 July 2016 and 2 August 2016: 4 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 3,787 hectares (37.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mbarali (3,808 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 91 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.

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