Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Sekhukhune
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 5,253 fire detections seen from space; 1,272 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 5,967.
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
- 5,253Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 1,272 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 34 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 9 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 12 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 76 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 24 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 79 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 431 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 1,531 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 1,230 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 653 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 1,169 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 8.5 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 9.0 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 316 ha burnt (0.023% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 50 ha burnt (0.004% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 248 ha burnt (0.018% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 640 ha burnt (0.047% 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 | 1,169 | 984 | 1,255 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 653 | 606 | 713 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 1,230 | 1,152 | 1,287 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 1,531 | 1,450 | 1,968 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 431 | 401 | 498 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 79 | 77 | 180 | 640 ha | 0.047% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 24 | 23 | 72 | 248 ha | 0.018% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 5 | 5 | 45 | 50 ha | 0.004% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 76 | 60 | 85 | 316 ha | 0.023% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 12 | 10 | 14 | 9.0 ha | 0.001% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 9 | 8 | 11 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 34 | 28 | 22 | 8.5 ha | 0.001% | 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
- 20245,967 fire detections, most in August 2024; 101,636 ha burnt
- 20145,207 fire detections, most in August 2014
- 20135,165 fire detections, most in August 2013
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 101,636 ha (7.5% of the place); 2025, 67,780 ha (5.0% of the place); 2023, 61,290 ha (4.5% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 5,210 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 4,710 | 67,780 ha | 5.0% |
| 2024 | 5,967 | 101,636 ha | 7.5% |
| 2023 | 5,152 | 61,290 ha | 4.5% |
| 2022 | 3,726 | 48,640 ha | 3.6% |
| 2021 | 3,957 | 57,165 ha | 4.2% |
| 2020 | 2,823 | 38,640 ha | 2.9% |
| 2019 | 3,324 | 48,611 ha | 3.6% |
| 2018 | 2,658 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 3,801 | · | · |
| 2016 | 1,940 | · | · |
| 2015 | 3,870 | · | · |
| 2014 | 5,207 | · | · |
| 2013 | 5,165 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 4,117 | · | · |
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 Sekhukhune, 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.