How long did the Nyasa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2016 to 21 October 2016 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2016 to 14 October 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,430 hectares (34.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Nyasa (3,457 ha, 1.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 · 2016-09-30 → 2016-10-21

Nyasa fire, September 2016 Nyasa

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2016, 22:58 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2016 in Nyasa, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,430 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 71th largest in Ruvuma since 2016 (of 94 with a page). Number 125 in Tanzania in 2016, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyasa · 2018 Nyasa · 2017 Nyasa · 2018 Nyasa · 2021

Burnt area: 3,430ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 30 Sept 2016 – 21 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Sept; 2016
Heat detections: 161; in a single hotspot: 105 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 143MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept21 Oct

Play back 20 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 6 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 17 Oct 20 Oct

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

50km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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

Nyasa where it started

3,457 ha reached on 30 Sept

1.1 %

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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
6 Oct	27.6 °C	38 %	36 km/h	Moderate 21
7 Oct	30.5 °C	33 %	35 km/h	High 26
8 Oct	29.8 °C	30 %	38 km/h	High 29
9 Oct	29.5 °C	30 %	45 km/h	High 31
10 Oct	28.4 °C	32 %	47 km/h	High 32
11 Oct	29.6 °C	28 %	50 km/h	High 34
12 Oct	29.4 °C	29 %	42 km/h	High 31
13 Oct	29.9 °C	29 %	42 km/h	High 32
14 Oct	29.5 °C	28 %	49 km/h	High 35
15 Oct	28.1 °C	35 %	48 km/h	High 35
16 Oct	30.2 °C	28 %	40 km/h	High 32
17 Oct	31.0 °C	30 %	43 km/h	High 34
18 Oct	29.6 °C	28 %	45 km/h	High 35
19 Oct	27.4 °C	29 %	48 km/h	High 36
20 Oct	28.8 °C	28 %	50 km/h	High 37
21 Oct	29.8 °C	29 %	45 km/h	High 35
22 Oct after	30.5 °C	26 %	38 km/h	High 34
23 Oct after	30.9 °C	28 %	38 km/h	High 34
24 Oct after	31.2 °C	28 %	40 km/h	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Sept 2016

After · 28 Oct 2016

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 · 161Every 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 Nyasa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2016 to 21 October 2016 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2016 to 14 October 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,430 hectares (34.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Nyasa (3,457 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 October 2016 to 14 October 2016. 161 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