Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Amathole
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 1,611 fire detections seen from space; 2,521 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 7,599.
Two readings from space. Fire detections are hot spots a VIIRS satellite saw as it passed, each about 375 m across, counted where they fall in the place: a big fire gives many, a short one between passes none. Burnt area is the ground that looks burnt afterwards, from Sentinel-3 at 300 m, in hectares. Neither is a fire report from the ground.
The last twelve months
- 1,611Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 2,521 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 233 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 56 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 172 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 38 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 40 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 51 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 218 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 147 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 228 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 307 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 71 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 50 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 253 ha burnt (0.012% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 137 ha burnt (0.007% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 296 ha burnt (0.014% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 16 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 52 ha burnt (0.002% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 164 ha burnt (0.008% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 1,603 ha burnt (0.076% of the place) |
| June 2026 | not out yet |
| July 2026 | not out yet |
| August 2026 | not out yet |
| September 2026 | not out yet |
| October 2026 | not out yet |
| Month | Detections | Nominal or high confidence | NOAA-20 (second reading) | Burnt | Share of the place | Land seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | 50 | 48 | 65 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 71 | 67 | 113 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 307 | 302 | 297 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 228 | 223 | 278 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 147 | 147 | 184 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 218 | 215 | 194 | 1,603 ha | 0.076% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 51 | 50 | 57 | 164 ha | 0.008% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 40 | 37 | 56 | 52 ha | 0.002% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 38 | 35 | 32 | 16 ha | 0.001% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 172 | 144 | 197 | 296 ha | 0.014% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 56 | 44 | 59 | 137 ha | 0.007% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 233 | 213 | 232 | 253 ha | 0.012% | 100% |
NOAA-20 carries the same instrument as S-NPP and passes about 50 minutes apart, so its count is a second reading of the same fires, not extra fires. “Land seen” is the share of the place’s land the burnt-area product saw often enough that month to tell.
The worst years
- 20247,599 fire detections, most in August 2024; 71,955 ha burnt
- 20136,340 fire detections, most in August 2013
- 20235,952 fire detections, most in August 2023; 48,118 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 71,955 ha (3.4% of the place); 2023, 48,118 ha (2.3% of the place); 2021, 39,214 ha (1.9% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 1,322 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 2,348 | 14,227 ha | 0.68% |
| 2024 | 7,599 | 71,955 ha | 3.4% |
| 2023 | 5,952 | 48,118 ha | 2.3% |
| 2022 | 1,512 | 7,032 ha | 0.33% |
| 2021 | 4,088 | 39,214 ha | 1.9% |
| 2020 | 2,564 | 13,240 ha | 0.63% |
| 2019 | 2,360 | 12,495 ha | 0.59% |
| 2018 | 1,985 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 1,902 | · | · |
| 2016 | 2,337 | · | · |
| 2015 | 1,981 | · | · |
| 2014 | 2,940 | · | · |
| 2013 | 6,340 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 3,720 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019. A larger place’s figures are the sums of its 2026 wards.
Everything we hold for Amathole, on one page
Source
Seen from space by American and European satellites: not fires reported on the ground.
How we worked this out
What we changed: we counted FIRMS’s detections (presumed vegetation fires only) by the 2026 ward their position falls in, and summed CLMS’s burned fraction times each pixel’s area over each ward; municipalities, districts and provinces are the sums of their wards.
Fire detections: we acknowledge the use of data and/or imagery from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), part of NASA’s LANCE (VIIRS 375 m, S-NPP and NOAA-20). Burnt area: generated using European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information (Burnt Area 300 m version 4, DOI 10.2909/8fa58061-28ab-49bb-9b77-c26b50733e34), modified; this does not mean the European Union endorses us.
Dataset: burnt area and fire, release of 12 November 2026.