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Fire in Richmond
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 724 fire detections seen from space; 162 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2020, 983.
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
- 724Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 162 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 57 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 11 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 10 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 30 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 37 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 65 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 75 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 73 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 155 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 104 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 35 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 72 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 23 ha burnt (0.018% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 8.8 ha burnt (0.007% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 9.3 ha burnt (0.007% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 19 ha burnt (0.015% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 87 ha burnt (0.069% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 15 ha burnt (0.012% 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 | 72 | 70 | 48 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 35 | 28 | 31 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 104 | 94 | 139 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 155 | 152 | 184 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 73 | 72 | 77 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 75 | 74 | 73 | 15 ha | 0.012% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 65 | 63 | 45 | 87 ha | 0.069% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 37 | 35 | 40 | 19 ha | 0.015% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 30 | 26 | 26 | 9.3 ha | 0.007% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 8.8 ha | 0.007% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 11 | 10 | 13 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 57 | 54 | 51 | 23 ha | 0.018% | 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
- 2020983 fire detections, most in July 2020; 4,940 ha burnt
- 2013891 fire detections, most in July 2013
- 2019853 fire detections, most in July 2019; 5,736 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2019, 5,736 ha (4.6% of the place); 2024, 5,604 ha (4.5% of the place); 2020, 4,940 ha (3.9% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 656 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 573 | 3,013 ha | 2.4% |
| 2024 | 799 | 5,604 ha | 4.5% |
| 2023 | 718 | 4,386 ha | 3.5% |
| 2022 | 591 | 3,166 ha | 2.5% |
| 2021 | 763 | 4,636 ha | 3.7% |
| 2020 | 983 | 4,940 ha | 3.9% |
| 2019 | 853 | 5,736 ha | 4.6% |
| 2018 | 755 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 847 | · | · |
| 2016 | 663 | · | · |
| 2015 | 668 | · | · |
| 2014 | 811 | · | · |
| 2013 | 891 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 737 | · | · |
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
Places in each ward: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Everything we hold for Richmond, 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.