Burned area
satellite only1,015ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 23 Oct 2026 – 6 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
MW · Malawi · –
Rumphi fire, October 2026 Rumphi
Dying down · last detection 6 Nov 2026, 11:34 UTC
The fire started on 23 October 2026 in Rumphi, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,015 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 101 in Malawi in 2026, of 103.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
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Fire page data · no saved version yetmatches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
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Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only15days
From 23 Oct 2026 to today: still being detected.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 6 Nov 2026, 11:34 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only23 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 23 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only29
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 54 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 23 Oct 2026 – 6 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only215MW
Total radiative power on 2 November 2026; hotspots that day: 10.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
This page is not in the change log yet: its first snapshot is saved tonight. What follows is reconstructed from each source’s date.
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Nothing to report yet.
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Versioned permanent link
This page has no snapshot in the log yet: the first one is saved tonight. Meanwhile, cite the page link with the date you accessed it.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire rumphi-2026-10-9.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-23 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-10-24 | 4 | 9 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-10-26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-10-29 | 1 | 7 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-10-30 | 4 | 102 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-10-31 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-11-01 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-11-02 | 10 | 215 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-11-04 | 5 | 36 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-11-05 | 2 | 26 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2026-11-06 | 2 | 10 | 1 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
Is it still active?
No detections since 6 Nov 2026, 11:34 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 1,015ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 23 Oct 2026 – 6 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 23 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 29
- in a single hotspot: 54 MW
- Average daily power
- 51MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
23 Oct6 Nov
6 Nov 2026
How it evolved, day by day
23 Oct
29 Oct
2 Nov
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
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
-
Rumphi where it started1,022 ha reached on 23 Oct0.2 %
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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 16 Oct 2026
After · 6 Nov 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 29Every 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 |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rumphi fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 October 2026 to 6 November 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 October 2026 to 6 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,015 hectares (10.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Rumphi (1,022 ha, 0.2 %).
- Is the Rumphi fire still active?
- No fire detections since 6 Nov 2026, 11:34 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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.
Satellite cross-check
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 30 October 2026 to 6 November 2026. 29 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.