How long did the Mlele fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 June 2019 and 4 July 2019: 8 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 4,277 hectares (42.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mlele (4,300 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 39 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.

TZ · Tanzania · 2019-06-27 → 2019-07-04

Mlele fire, 27 June 2019 Mlele

Out · last detection 5 Jul 2019, 11:27 UTC

The fire started on 27 June 2019 in Mlele, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,277 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 137th largest in Katavi since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 60 in Tanzania in 2019, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mlele · 2017 Mlele · 2026 Mlele · 2026 Mlele · 2022

Burnt area: 4,277ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 27 Jun 2019 – 4 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 27 Jun; 2019
Heat detections: 117; in a single hotspot: 93 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 108MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jun4 Jul

Play back 5 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jun 28 Jun 29 Jun 1 Jul 3 Jul 5 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

30°high

39km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 843 ha in 2016, 1,904 ha in 2017, 24 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,454 ha that had burned before.

1,589 ha Mlele fire, July 2017 5,245 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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

Mlele where it started

4,300 ha reached on 27 Jun

0.1 %

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)
27 Jun	29.1 °C	37 %	35 km/h	High 30
28 Jun	30.1 °C	34 %	30 km/h	High 30
29 Jun	29.5 °C	35 %	34 km/h	High 31
30 Jun	29.4 °C	33 %	35 km/h	High 31
1 Jul	29.9 °C	25 %	33 km/h	High 34
2 Jul	29.2 °C	25 %	35 km/h	High 34
3 Jul	29.7 °C	30 %	38 km/h	High 36
4 Jul	29.3 °C	29 %	39 km/h	High 37
5 Jul after	29.1 °C	33 %	34 km/h	High 36
6 Jul after	29.2 °C	37 %	33 km/h	High 32
7 Jul after	28.5 °C	42 %	37 km/h	High 30
8 Jul after	29.5 °C	36 %	32 km/h	High 30
9 Jul after	29.7 °C	34 %	36 km/h	High 31
10 Jul after	29.9 °C	36 %	35 km/h	High 30
11 Jul after	29.9 °C	31 %	37 km/h	High 32
12 Jul after	29.1 °C	33 %	33 km/h	High 31
13 Jul after	28.9 °C	35 %	28 km/h	High 30
14 Jul after	29.3 °C	33 %	34 km/h	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jun 2019

After · 11 Jul 2019

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 · 117Every 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 Mlele fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 June 2019 and 4 July 2019: 8 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 4,277 hectares (42.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mlele (4,300 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 39 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

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. 117 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