Burned area
satellite only2,065ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 7 Aug 2018 – 17 Aug 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ZW · Zimbabwe · –
Mbire fire, 7 August 2018 Makonde, Mbire
Out · last detection 15 Aug 2018, 10:59 UTC
The fire started on 7 August 2018 in Mbire, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,065 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 36th largest in Mashonaland Central since 2016 (of 257 with a page). Number 68 in Zimbabwe in 2018, of 265.
The power measured by the satellite is low (27.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Zumbu · 2022Zumbu · 2018Mbire · 2017Makonde · 2016
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-15matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only11days
7 Aug 2018 to 17 Aug 2018: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 15 Aug 2018, 10:59 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only7 Aug 2018
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 7 Aug 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only64
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 27 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 7 Aug 2018 – 17 Aug 2018
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only170MW
Total radiative power on 8 August 2018; hotspots that day: 22.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 8 Aug 2018
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model45.2FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 7 Aug 2018, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model33.7°C · 18% RH
High of 33.7 °C and minimum humidity of 18% on 8 August 2018; gusts of 48 km/h on 13 August 2018.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 7 Aug 2018 – 17 Aug 2018
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logName: Makonde → Mbire.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 10 August 2018 → 17 August 2018.
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/mbire-2018-08-3?v=2026-11-15A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire mbire-2018-08-3.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-08-07 | 21 | 85 | 32.9 | 13.2 | 20 | 10.8 | 25.9 | 0 | 45.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-08-08 | 22 | 170 | 33.7 | 15.3 | 18 | 13.5 | 31 | 0 | 54.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-08-09 | 14 | 122 | 30.4 | 16.8 | 34 | 22.2 | 47.5 | 0 | 58.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-08-10 | 6 | 21 | 29.7 | 15.9 | 30 | 16.9 | 39.2 | 0 | 46.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-08-11 | 0 | 0 | 31.8 | 14.8 | 25 | 13.1 | 31.3 | 0 | 47.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-08-12 | 0 | 0 | 30.3 | 16.4 | 25 | 21.2 | 46.4 | 0 | 62 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-08-13 | 0 | 0 | 30.3 | 17.2 | 26 | 22.3 | 48.2 | 0 | 63.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-08-14 | 0 | 0 | 30.1 | 15.5 | 24 | 19.4 | 43.2 | 0 | 58.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-08-15 | 1 | 3 | 30.5 | 15.2 | 25 | 18.8 | 41.4 | 0 | 55.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-08-16 | 0 | 0 | 30.8 | 14.9 | 23 | 15.3 | 35.3 | 0 | 53.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-08-17 | 0 | 0 | 30.7 | 14.5 | 22 | 13.9 | 33.1 | 0 | 48.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-08-18 | 0 | 0 | 31.5 | 13.8 | 22 | 14.7 | 33.5 | 0 | 52.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2018-08-19 | 0 | 0 | 29.5 | 14.6 | 30 | 19.7 | 43.2 | 0 | 58.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2018-08-20 | 0 | 0 | 29.5 | 14.9 | 26 | 15.8 | 36.7 | 0 | 52.2 | extremo | 0 |
| 2018-08-21 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 13.4 | 22 | 16.2 | 37.1 | 0 | 51.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2018-08-22 | 0 | 0 | 30.6 | 15.6 | 25 | 17.1 | 38.5 | 0 | 52.2 | extremo | 0 |
| 2018-08-23 | 0 | 0 | 31.3 | 16.4 | 23 | 16.1 | 35.6 | 0 | 48.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2018-08-24 | 0 | 0 | 31.5 | 16.4 | 25 | 18.5 | 41 | 0 | 56.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2018-08-25 | 0 | 0 | 30.4 | 17 | 24 | 18.7 | 42.1 | 0 | 56.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2018-08-26 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 15.5 | 28 | 14.2 | 33.5 | 0 | 45.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2018-08-27 | 0 | 0 | 32.5 | 14.8 | 19 | 10 | 25.9 | 0 | 45.4 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 2,065ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 7 Aug 2018 – 17 Aug 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 7 Aug
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 64
- in a single hotspot: 27 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 80MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
7 Aug17 Aug
15 Aug 2018
How it evolved, day by day
7 Aug
8 Aug
9 Aug
10 Aug
15 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
34°high
48km/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
33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 336 ha in 2016, 352 ha in 2017.
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
-
1,579 ha0.2 %
-
Mbire where it started491 ha0.1 %
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)
Started with 60 days without rain: 63 % of the area in Zimbabwe
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Aug | 32.9 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 8 Aug | 33.7 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 9 Aug | 30.4 °C | 34 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 10 Aug | 29.7 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 11 Aug | 31.8 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 12 Aug | 30.3 °C | 25 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 13 Aug | 30.3 °C | 26 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 14 Aug | 30.1 °C | 24 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 15 Aug | 30.5 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 16 Aug | 30.8 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 17 Aug | 30.7 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Aug after | 31.5 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 30 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 20 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 21 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 22 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 23 Aug after | 31.3 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 24 Aug after | 31.5 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 25 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 26 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 19 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 45.2, a minimum humidity of 20% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 28.
FWI at the start
45.2
Minimum humidity
20 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Mbire fire, 7 August 2018
2,065 ha
11 days
FWI 45.2
Min. humidity 20 %
Zumbu fire, September 2022
14,877 ha
23 days
FWI 45.8
Min. humidity 20 %
103 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Zumbu fire, September 2018
4,954 ha
13 days
FWI 44.8
Min. humidity 19 %
92 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Zumbu fire, September 2022
4,125 ha
15 days
FWI 45.3
Min. humidity 19 %
116 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Centenary/ Muzarabani fire, August 2024
1,017 ha
4 days
FWI 44.9
Min. humidity 19 %
109 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Zvimba fire, August 2017
1,018 ha
2 days
FWI 43.4
Min. humidity 20 %
97 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 5 days
- median duration
- 1,227 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 2.0 mm
- rain at the end (median; 4 of 28 had it)
It was 1.7 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 11 days, against 5 days.
Only 7 of its 28 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 24 of 28, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
48km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 17 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 4 of 28, with a median of 2.0 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 31 Jul 2018
After · 24 Aug 2018
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 64Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mbire fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 August 2018 to 17 August 2018 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 August 2018 to 10 August 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,065 hectares (20.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Makonde (1,579 ha, 0.2 %); Mbire (491 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 28. Their median duration was 5 days and their median area 1,227 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 7 of its 28 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 24 of 28, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.
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.
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Name: Makonde → Mbire.
- Last day with fire: 10 August 2018 → 17 August 2018.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 August 2018 to 10 August 2018. 64 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.