Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Lephalale
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 612 fire detections seen from space; 36 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 1,745.
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
- 612Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 36 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 7 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 10 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 22 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 15 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| May 2026 | 12 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 24 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 74 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 240 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 204 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 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 10 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 14 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 12 ha burnt (0.001% 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 | 204 | 171 | 175 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 240 | 237 | 236 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 74 | 61 | 70 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 24 | 23 | 39 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 3 | 3 | 5 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 12 | 12 | 13 | 12 ha | 0.001% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 14 ha | 0.001% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 15 | 10 | 19 | 10 ha | 0.001% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 22 | 18 | 14 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 7 | 4 | 8 | 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
- 20241,745 fire detections, most in September 2024; 17,423 ha burnt
- 20231,703 fire detections, most in October 2023; 29,822 ha burnt
- 20131,520 fire detections, most in November 2013
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2023, 29,822 ha (2.2% of the place); 2024, 17,423 ha (1.3% of the place); 2022, 7,897 ha (0.58% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 595 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 549 | 5,347 ha | 0.39% |
| 2024 | 1,745 | 17,423 ha | 1.3% |
| 2023 | 1,703 | 29,822 ha | 2.2% |
| 2022 | 896 | 7,897 ha | 0.58% |
| 2021 | 912 | 5,350 ha | 0.39% |
| 2020 | 207 | 2,045 ha | 0.15% |
| 2019 | 671 | 7,542 ha | 0.55% |
| 2018 | 748 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 707 | · | · |
| 2016 | 242 | · | · |
| 2015 | 1,110 | · | · |
| 2014 | 376 | · | · |
| 2013 | 1,520 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 927 | · | · |
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 (Onverwacht)
- Ward 4 (Onverwacht)
- Ward 5 (Letora, Mokurwanyane)
- Ward 6 (Setateng)
- Ward 7 (Ga-monyeki, Mmatladi)
- Ward 8 (Bangalong, Abbotspoort)
- Ward 9 (Disappointment, Enterprise)
- Ward 10 (Immelman, Strydomsdrift)
- Ward 11 (Groblersbrug, Kokstad)
- Ward 12 (Bossche-Diesch, Ga-Seleka)
- Ward 13 (Monte Christo, Hardekraaltjie)
- Ward 14
- Ward 15 (Lephalale, Ellisras)
Places in each ward: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Everything we hold for Lephalale, 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.