Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Sundays River Valley
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 182 fire detections seen from space; 1,499 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2014, 1,306.
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
- 182Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 1,499 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 15 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 97 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 28 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 14 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 9 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| May 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| June 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| July 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| August 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| October 2026 | 11 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 1,023 ha burnt (0.17% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 461 ha burnt (0.077% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 15 ha burnt (0.002% 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 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% 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 | 11 | 11 | 24 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 1 | 1 | 3 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 3 | 3 | 3 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 1 | 1 | 4 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 9 | 5 | 14 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 14 | 13 | 21 | 15 ha | 0.002% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 28 | 27 | 18 | 461 ha | 0.077% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 97 | 86 | 108 | 1,023 ha | 0.17% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 15 | 11 | 25 | 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
- 20141,306 fire detections, most in August 2014
- 2013943 fire detections, most in August 2013
- 2024896 fire detections, most in May 2024; 9,229 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 9,229 ha (1.5% of the place); 2025, 2,828 ha (0.47% of the place); 2019, 2,592 ha (0.43% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 70 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 298 | 2,828 ha | 0.47% |
| 2024 | 896 | 9,229 ha | 1.5% |
| 2023 | 108 | 364 ha | 0.061% |
| 2022 | 71 | 520 ha | 0.086% |
| 2021 | 204 | 1,601 ha | 0.27% |
| 2020 | 255 | 2,127 ha | 0.36% |
| 2019 | 303 | 2,592 ha | 0.43% |
| 2018 | 507 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 729 | · | · |
| 2016 | 593 | · | · |
| 2015 | 69 | · | · |
| 2014 | 1,306 | · | · |
| 2013 | 943 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 41 | · | · |
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 (Moses Mabida)
- Ward 2 (Nqweba, Joe Slovo)
- Ward 3 (Valentia, Addo)
- Ward 4 (Paterson)
- Ward 5 (Addo)
- Ward 6 (Appolisville, Kinkelbos)
- Ward 7 (Kleinpoort, Eastern Control Office & Boom)
- Ward 8 (Barsheba, Enon)
Places in each ward: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Everything we hold for Sundays River Valley, 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.