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ZW · Zimbabwe · –

Shamva fire, November 2026 Shamva, Bindura

Out · last detection 11 Nov 2026, 22:48 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 2 November 2026 in Shamva, Zimbabwe. It was active for 9 days, with 103 heat detections and an area with fire of about 1,302 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 2 municipalities.

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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GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Area with fire
≈ 1,302ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
9days
2 Nov 2026 – 10 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
2 Nov
2026
Heat detections
103
in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
115MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Nov10 Nov
11 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

2 Nov 2026 · 79 MW · 16 3 Nov 2026 · 197 MW · 29 4 Nov 2026 · 344 MW · 37 5 Nov 2026 · 174 MW · 20 6 Nov 2026 · 36 MW · 6 7 Nov 2026 · 1 MW · 1 8 Nov 2026 · 70 MW · 4 10 Nov 2026 · 18 MW · 5 11 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0
2 Nov 4 Nov 6 Nov 8 Nov 11 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high
47km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. Shamva where it started
    1,148 ha reached on 2 Nov
    0.4 %
  2. 154 ha reached on 2 Nov
    0.1 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
2 Nov 31.6 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Nov 32.9 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Nov 33.0 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Nov 33.4 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Nov 33.2 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Nov 34.2 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Nov 35.8 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 47
9 Nov 29.1 °C 36 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
10 Nov 28.9 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Nov after 31.1 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Nov after 32.1 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Oct 2026
After · 13 Nov 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 8 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.74
31 Oct3 Nov6 Nov9 Nov
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 · 103Every 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 Zimbabwe

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Shamva fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 2 November 2026 to 10 November 2026 (9 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 1,302 hectares with fire (13.0 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Shamva (1,148 ha, 0.4 %); Bindura (154 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Shamva fire still active?
No fire detections since 11 Nov 2026, 22:48 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 12 November 2026.
  1. Page published (≈ 1,302 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

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How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 1,302 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 103 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.