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Songea fire, October 2025 Songea

Out · last detection 2 Nov 2025, 23:26 UTC

The fire started on 21 October 2025 in Songea, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,346 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 33th largest in Ruvuma since 2016 (of 92 with a page). Number 78 in Tanzania in 2025, of 161.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Songea · 2019Songea · 2017Njombe · 2025Njombe · 2016

Burnt area
4,346ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
21 Oct 2025 – 3 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
21 Oct
2025
Heat detections
145
in a single hotspot: 172 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
251MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

2 Nov 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct3 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

21 Oct 2025 · 257 MW · 10 22 Oct 2025 · 2 MW · 1 24 Oct 2025 · 223 MW · 10 25 Oct 2025 · 112 MW · 12 26 Oct 2025 · 144 MW · 15 28 Oct 2025 · 742 MW · 22 29 Oct 2025 · 23 MW · 13 30 Oct 2025 · 347 MW · 18 31 Oct 2025 · 174 MW · 5 1 Nov 2025 · 684 MW · 16 2 Nov 2025 · 60 MW · 11
21 Oct 24 Oct 26 Oct 28 Oct 29 Oct 31 Oct 2 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

33°high
48km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 8 Nov.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 172 ha in 2018, 1,774 ha in 2019, 1,325 ha in 2021, 593 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,741 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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

  1. Songea where it started
    4,362 ha reached on 19 Oct
    0.3 %

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)
21 Oct 29.1 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
22 Oct 29.2 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.5 mm High 22
23 Oct 28.1 °C 52 % 35 km/h 2.1 mm Low 8
24 Oct 29.4 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
25 Oct 30.5 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Oct 31.7 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Oct 32.6 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
28 Oct 31.6 °C 35 % 36 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 19
29 Oct 29.7 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 20
30 Oct 28.9 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Oct 30.2 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
1 Nov 30.3 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Nov 29.5 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Nov 29.5 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Nov after 29.0 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
5 Nov after 30.9 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
6 Nov after 31.7 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Nov after 30.8 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
8 Nov after 31.4 °C 38 % 36 km/h 3.3 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Oct 2025
After · 10 Nov 2025

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 30 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 44 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak44 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM1046 µg/m³
Optical depth0.69
19202122232425262728293031123456
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 · 145Every 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 Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Songea fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 October 2025 and 3 November 2025: 14 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 4,346 hectares (43.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Songea (4,362 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 48 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 145 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.