Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Dr AB Xuma
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 636 fire detections seen from space; 21 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2023, 1,596.
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
- 636Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 21 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 1 fire detection |
| December 2025 | 0 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 24 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| March 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| April 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| May 2026 | 9 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 31 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 289 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 256 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 13 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 10 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 1.5 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 19 ha burnt (0.008% 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 | 10 | 9 | 7 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 13 | 13 | 14 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 256 | 255 | 268 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 289 | 283 | 326 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 31 | 30 | 23 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 19 ha | 0.008% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 24 | 11 | 41 | 1.5 ha | 0.001% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 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
- 20231,596 fire detections, most in July 2023; 24,185 ha burnt
- 20241,521 fire detections, most in August 2024; 31,677 ha burnt
- 20131,106 fire detections, most in July 2013
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 31,677 ha (12.7% of the place); 2023, 24,185 ha (9.7% of the place); 2021, 16,789 ha (6.7% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 635 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 333 | 8,663 ha | 3.5% |
| 2024 | 1,521 | 31,677 ha | 12.7% |
| 2023 | 1,596 | 24,185 ha | 9.7% |
| 2022 | 281 | 6,202 ha | 2.5% |
| 2021 | 939 | 16,789 ha | 6.7% |
| 2020 | 406 | 9,263 ha | 3.7% |
| 2019 | 406 | 8,233 ha | 3.3% |
| 2018 | 195 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 247 | · | · |
| 2016 | 321 | · | · |
| 2015 | 345 | · | · |
| 2014 | 759 | · | · |
| 2013 | 1,106 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 721 | · | · |
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.
Each ward
- Ward 1
- Ward 2
- Ward 3
- Ward 4
- Ward 5
- Ward 6
- Ward 7 (Fama)
- Ward 8
- Ward 9
- Ward 10 (Masonwabe)
- Ward 11 (Ngcobo)
- Ward 12
- Ward 13
- Ward 14
- Ward 15 (Coghlan)
- Ward 16 (Clarkebury)
- Ward 17
- Ward 18
- Ward 19
Places in each ward: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Everything we hold for Dr AB Xuma, 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.