Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Thabo Mofutsanyane
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 3,070 fire detections seen from space; 873 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2014, 6,751.
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
- 3,070Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 873 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 14 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 17 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 41 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 16 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 9 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 9 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 20 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 113 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 599 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 1,225 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 584 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 423 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 | 172 ha burnt (0.005% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 47 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 121 ha burnt (0.004% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 169 ha burnt (0.005% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 364 ha burnt (0.011% 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 | 423 | 384 | 440 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 584 | 563 | 751 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 1,225 | 1,187 | 1,410 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 599 | 584 | 687 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 113 | 112 | 132 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 364 ha | 0.011% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 169 ha | 0.005% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 9 | 8 | 6 | 121 ha | 0.004% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 16 | 15 | 11 | 47 ha | 0.001% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 41 | 38 | 26 | 172 ha | 0.005% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 17 | 15 | 29 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 14 | 13 | 26 | 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
- 20146,751 fire detections, most in September 2014
- 20236,750 fire detections, most in September 2023; 135,176 ha burnt
- 20245,782 fire detections, most in August 2024; 176,699 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 176,699 ha (5.4% of the place); 2023, 135,176 ha (4.1% of the place); 2021, 105,962 ha (3.2% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 3,039 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 2,164 | 39,101 ha | 1.2% |
| 2024 | 5,782 | 176,699 ha | 5.4% |
| 2023 | 6,750 | 135,176 ha | 4.1% |
| 2022 | 3,626 | 64,092 ha | 2.0% |
| 2021 | 5,159 | 105,962 ha | 3.2% |
| 2020 | 4,150 | 92,175 ha | 2.8% |
| 2019 | 2,591 | 53,714 ha | 1.6% |
| 2018 | 3,481 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 4,783 | · | · |
| 2016 | 1,243 | · | · |
| 2015 | 2,988 | · | · |
| 2014 | 6,751 | · | · |
| 2013 | 4,983 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 4,302 | · | · |
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 Thabo Mofutsanyane, 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.