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Meatu fire, 24 June 2020 Meatu

Out · last detection 13 Jul 2020, 22:17 UTC

The fire started on 24 June 2020 in Meatu, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,521 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Simiyu since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 10 in Tanzania in 2020, of 187.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Meatu · 2016Meatu · 2018Meatu · 2025Meatu · 2016

Burnt area
15,521ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
24 Jun 2020 – 13 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
24 Jun
2020
Heat detections
564
in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
151MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jun13 Jul
13 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jun 2020 · 91 MW · 19 25 Jun 2020 · 90 MW · 38 26 Jun 2020 · 220 MW · 44 27 Jun 2020 · 316 MW · 48 28 Jun 2020 · 226 MW · 45 29 Jun 2020 · 327 MW · 40 30 Jun 2020 · 66 MW · 20 2 Jul 2020 · 37 MW · 5 3 Jul 2020 · 9 MW · 1 4 Jul 2020 · 137 MW · 21 5 Jul 2020 · 67 MW · 27 6 Jul 2020 · 68 MW · 10 7 Jul 2020 · 48 MW · 21 8 Jul 2020 · 487 MW · 66 9 Jul 2020 · 271 MW · 38 10 Jul 2020 · 72 MW · 22 11 Jul 2020 · 114 MW · 37 12 Jul 2020 · 221 MW · 38 13 Jul 2020 · 4 MW · 4
24 Jun 27 Jun 30 Jun 4 Jul 7 Jul 8 Jul 10 Jul 13 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
52km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,407 ha in 2016, 1,147 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.8% of the area of London (155 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

  1. Meatu where it started
    15,620 ha reached on 23 Jun
    1.7 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.40 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.40 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
24 Jun 25.9 °C 43 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jun 26.1 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jun 27.1 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Jun 27.3 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jun 27.4 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jun 27.0 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Jun 26.6 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Jul 25.6 °C 43 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Jul 25.3 °C 44 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul 26.2 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Jul 25.6 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Jul 26.6 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Jul 25.6 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Jul 25.6 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Jul 25.7 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Jul 27.6 °C 40 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Jul 26.7 °C 45 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Jul 25.4 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jul 27.5 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Jul 25.6 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Jul after 26.4 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Jul after 26.7 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Jul after 24.6 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Jul after 24.0 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jul after 23.3 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Jul after 24.7 °C 37 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jul after 24.8 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Jul after 26.4 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jul after 26.9 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jul after 26.9 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jun 2020
After · 20 Jul 2020

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 · 564Every 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 Meatu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 June 2020 and 13 July 2020: 20 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 15,521 hectares (155.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Meatu (15,620 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 564 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.