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Urambo fire, June 2019 Urambo

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2019, 12:11 UTC

The fire started on 25 June 2019 in Urambo, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,582 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 27th largest in Tabora since 2016 (of 44 with a page). Number 89 in Tanzania in 2019, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Urambo · 2026Mlele · 2026Mlele · 2021

Burnt area
3,582ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
25 Jun 2019 – 8 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
25 Jun
2019
Heat detections
117
in a single hotspot: 140 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
380MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jun8 Jul
8 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jun 2019 · 136 MW · 12 30 Jun 2019 · 36 MW · 6 2 Jul 2019 · 41 MW · 5 3 Jul 2019 · 2,667 MW · 68 4 Jul 2019 · 7 MW · 2 5 Jul 2019 · 25 MW · 5 6 Jul 2019 · 109 MW · 18 8 Jul 2019 · 17 MW · 1
25 Jun 2 Jul 3 Jul 4 Jul 6 Jul

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
38km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,059 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Urambo where it started
    3,608 ha reached on 25 Jun
    0.7 %

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
2 Jul 29.8 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Jul 30.5 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Jul 29.3 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Jul 29.5 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Jul 29.4 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Jul 29.1 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Jul 30.5 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Jul after 30.4 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jul after 30.1 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Jul after 30.0 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jul after 29.9 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jul after 29.1 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Jul after 29.8 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jul after 29.0 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jul after 28.7 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Jun 2019
After · 15 Jul 2019

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 · 117Every 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 Urambo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 June 2019 to 8 July 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 July 2019 to 6 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,582 hectares (35.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Urambo (3,608 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

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
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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.

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 2 July 2019 to 6 July 2019. 117 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.