Njombe fire, August 2025 Njombe
The fire started on 31 August 2025 in Njombe, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,875 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 11th largest in Njombe since 2016 (of 49 with a page). Number 24 in Tanzania in 2025, of 161.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,875ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 31 Aug 2025 – 14 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 264
- in a single hotspot: 113 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 272MW
- 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. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 18 Sept.
This area had burned before
82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,430 ha in 2016, 3,888 ha in 2018, 5,901 ha in 2021, 153 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,485 ha that had burned before.
- 5,200 ha Kilombero fire, November 2021 22,476 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,892 ha Njombe fire, October 2018 3,262 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,430 ha Njombe fire, October 2016 4,001 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
-
Njombe where it started7,925 ha reached on 2 Sept2.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Sept | 25.7 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 8 Sept | 26.8 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 9 Sept | 25.5 °C | 48 % | 28 km/h | 2.6 mm | Low 7 |
| 10 Sept | 27.6 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 11 Sept | 27.0 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 12 Sept | 25.5 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 13 Sept | 26.8 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Sept | 27.5 °C | 36 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 15 Sept after | 27.6 °C | 38 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 16 Sept after | 26.1 °C | 40 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 17 Sept after | 28.2 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 18 Sept after | 26.6 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 1.6 mm | Moderate 12 |
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 9 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 81 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.2 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 · 264Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 22,476 haKilombero3 November 2021 · 24 days · 8 km away
- 10,583 haNjombeNovember 2016 · 5 days · 17 km away
- 10,070 haNjombeSeptember 2025 · 13 days · 18 km away
- 10,603 haNjombe1 October 2020 · 6 days · 23 km away
- 10,365 haNjombe Urban14 October 2016 · 15 days · 24 km away
- 10,127 haKilombero2 November 2021 · 20 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Njombe fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2025 to 14 September 2025 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2025 to 13 September 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,875 hectares (78.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Njombe (7,925 ha, 2.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.6 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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.
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 September 2025 to 13 September 2025. 264 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.