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Mlele fire, 18 July 2026 Mlele

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2026, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Mlele, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,034 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 265th largest in Katavi since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 202 in Tanzania in 2026, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mlele · 2023Mlele · 2016Mlele · 2026Mlele · 2026

Burnt area
3,034ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
18 Jul 2026 – 22 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Jul
2026
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
93MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul22 Jul
23 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2026 · 86 MW · 11 19 Jul 2026 · 354 MW · 20 20 Jul 2026 · 37 MW · 6 21 Jul 2026 · 48 MW · 5 22 Jul 2026 · 23 MW · 3 23 Jul 2026 · 8 MW · 1
18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul 23 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

33°high
35km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

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: 737 ha in 2016, 159 ha in 2020, 717 ha in 2022, 1,499 ha in 2023, 1,014 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,789 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Mlele where it started
    3,052 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.1 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
18 Jul 30.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jul 30.8 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jul 31.5 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jul 32.9 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Jul 31.5 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul after 31.3 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Jul after 30.8 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Jul after 30.5 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Jul after 30.3 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jul after 30.2 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul after 31.0 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jul after 31.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jul after 30.7 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Jul after 31.0 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Aug after 29.9 °C 27 % 40 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.

Before · 11 Jul 2026
After · 29 Jul 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 19 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak51 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM1053 µg/m³
Optical depth0.53
16171819202122232425
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 58Every 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 Mlele fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2026 and 22 July 2026: 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 3,034 hectares (30.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mlele (3,052 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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. 58 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.

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.