How long did the Songea fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 August 2025 and 8 September 2025: 16 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 9,861 hectares (98.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Songea (9,927 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

TZ · Tanzania · 2025-08-24 → 2025-09-08

Songea fire, 24 August 2025 Songea

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2025, 11:10 UTC

The fire started on 24 August 2025 in Songea, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,861 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Ruvuma since 2016 (of 92 with a page). Number 16 in Tanzania in 2025, of 161.

Burnt area: 9,861ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 24 Aug 2025 – 8 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 24 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 379; in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Energy released: 3.1GW; sum of detected power

Play back 8 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Aug8 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

242526272829303112345678

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

42km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 839 ha in 2017, 2,463 ha in 2018, 370 ha in 2021, 1,753 ha in 2022, 1,033 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,732 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Songea where it started

9,927 ha reached on 22 Aug

0.7 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
24 Aug	27.0 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Aug	27.7 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
26 Aug	27.4 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
27 Aug	27.3 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Aug	28.8 °C	21 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
29 Aug	27.4 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Aug	27.2 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Aug	27.8 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
1 Sept	28.6 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Sept	26.6 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
3 Sept	25.6 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
4 Sept	28.1 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Sept	29.5 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
6 Sept	28.6 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 Sept	27.5 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Sept	29.3 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
9 Sept after	27.7 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 32
10 Sept after	29.4 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Sept after	28.7 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
12 Sept after	27.9 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Sept after	28.4 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Sept after	29.2 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Sept after	28.8 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Sept after	28.9 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
17 Sept after	29.2 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Sept after	28.5 °C	39 %	38 km/h	0.8 mm	High 25

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Aug 2025

After · 15 Sept 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 31 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 89 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak89 µg/m³

Days over the guideline19 days

PM1091 µg/m³

Optical depth0.58

WHO 15

222324252627282930311234567891011

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 · 379Every 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 Songea fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 August 2025 and 8 September 2025: 16 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 9,861 hectares (98.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Songea (9,927 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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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.

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