Mbarali fire, October 2023 Mbarali
The fire started on 16 October 2023 in Mbarali, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,235 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 43th largest in Mbeya since 2016 (of 147 with a page). Number 12 in Tanzania in 2023, of 44.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,235ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 16 Oct 2023 – 22 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 16 Oct
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 286
- in a single hotspot: 37 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 307MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,752 ha in 2016, 599 ha in 2017, 143 ha in 2018, 4,460 ha in 2019, 3,158 ha in 2020, 3,842 ha in 2021, 1,311 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,223 ha that had burned before.
- 3,556 ha Mbarali fire, August 2019 7,542 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,292 ha Mbarali fire, September 2016 4,851 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,129 ha Mbarali fire, October 2020 3,014 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,976 ha Mbarali fire, September 2021 3,516 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,311 ha Mbarali fire, August 2022 4,398 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 904 ha Mbarali fire, August 2019 3,169 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 599 ha Mbarali fire, November 2017 5,393 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
-
Mbarali where it started5,269 ha reached on 15 Oct0.4 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Oct | 35.3 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Oct | 35.8 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Oct | 36.2 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 19 Oct | 35.8 °C | 21 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 20 Oct | 32.9 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 21 Oct | 34.6 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 22 Oct | 36.5 °C | 17 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 23 Oct after | 36.5 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 24 Oct after | 36.9 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 Oct after | 36.0 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 26 Oct after | 35.3 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 27 Oct after | 35.8 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 28 Oct after | 35.3 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 Oct after | 32.1 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 40 |
| 30 Oct after | 36.5 °C | 18 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 31 Oct after | 35.1 °C | 20 % | 49 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 1 Nov after | 35.2 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.4 mm | Extreme 56 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 22 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 286Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,542 haMbarali6 August 2019 · 14 days · 3 km away
- 5,855 haMbaraliDecember 2021 · 7 days · 11 km away
- 18,660 haMbarali6 July 2016 · 15 days · 13 km away
- 9,766 haMbaraliAugust 2025 · 16 days · 30 km away
- 11,028 haMbarali16 September 2026 · 23 days · 34 km away
- 5,727 haMbaraliOctober 2018 · 7 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mbarali fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 October 2023 and 22 October 2023: 7 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 5,235 hectares (52.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mbarali (5,269 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
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.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 286 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.
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.