Mbarali fire, October 2025 Mbarali
The fire started on 11 October 2025 in Mbarali, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,686 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 98th largest in Mbeya since 2016 (of 147 with a page). Number 108 in Tanzania in 2025, of 161.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,686ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 11 Oct 2025 – 15 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 11 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 110
- in a single hotspot: 32 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 128MW
- 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
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,689 ha in 2016, 1,219 ha in 2017, 1,355 ha in 2019, 1,850 ha in 2021, 30 ha in 2023, 582 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,402 ha that had burned before.
- 1,652 ha Mbarali fire, October 2021 3,098 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,568 ha Mbarali fire, August 2016 3,792 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 804 ha Mbarali fire, June 2019 4,028 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 582 ha Mbarali fire, September 2024 3,123 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 402 ha Mbarali fire, August 2019 3,154 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 254 ha Mbarali fire, August 2017 4,038 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 started3,708 ha reached on 11 Oct0.3 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Oct | 33.1 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 Oct | 32.5 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 13 Oct | 33.6 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 14 Oct | 32.5 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Oct | 32.6 °C | 22 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 16 Oct after | 33.6 °C | 22 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Oct after | 34.0 °C | 17 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 18 Oct after | 32.6 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 19 Oct after | 33.6 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 20 Oct after | 32.9 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 21 Oct after | 32.9 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Oct after | 33.2 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 Oct after | 32.1 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Oct after | 33.5 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 25 Oct after | 34.1 °C | 19 % | 33 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.
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 13 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 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 · 110Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 9,766 haMbaraliAugust 2025 · 16 days · 10 km away
- 11,028 haMbarali16 September 2026 · 23 days · 21 km away
- 8,435 haMbarali19 September 2026 · 20 days · 22 km away
- 18,660 haMbarali6 July 2016 · 15 days · 26 km away
- 140,758 haMbarali4 September 2021 · 45 days · 38 km away
- 16,427 haMbarali6 October 2020 · 7 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mbarali fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 October 2025 and 15 October 2025: 5 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 3,686 hectares (36.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mbarali (3,708 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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
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. 110 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.
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.