Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Uthukela
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 4,974 fire detections seen from space; 1,338 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2013, 8,111.
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
- 4,974Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 1,338 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 12 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 10 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 8 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 20 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 7 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 95 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 400 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 1,263 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 1,645 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 1,104 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 405 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 | 7.6 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 181 ha burnt (0.016% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 39 ha burnt (0.003% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 1,110 ha burnt (0.10% 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 | 405 | 378 | 462 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 1,104 | 1,057 | 1,073 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 1,645 | 1,580 | 1,883 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 1,263 | 1,237 | 1,545 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 400 | 393 | 473 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 95 | 92 | 87 | 1,110 ha | 0.10% | 99% |
| April 2026 | 5 | 4 | 10 | 39 ha | 0.003% | 99% |
| March 2026 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 181 ha | 0.016% | 99% |
| February 2026 | 20 | 20 | 25 | 7.6 ha | 0.001% | 99% |
| January 2026 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| December 2025 | 10 | 9 | 11 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| November 2025 | 12 | 11 | 26 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
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
- 20138,111 fire detections, most in August 2013
- 20236,350 fire detections, most in August 2023; 92,505 ha burnt
- 20206,229 fire detections, most in July 2020; 95,093 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 107,042 ha (9.6% of the place); 2020, 95,093 ha (8.5% of the place); 2023, 92,505 ha (8.3% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 4,952 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 3,797 | 52,822 ha | 4.7% |
| 2024 | 5,542 | 107,042 ha | 9.6% |
| 2023 | 6,350 | 92,505 ha | 8.3% |
| 2022 | 3,957 | 56,751 ha | 5.1% |
| 2021 | 6,186 | 83,593 ha | 7.5% |
| 2020 | 6,229 | 95,093 ha | 8.5% |
| 2019 | 4,487 | 76,805 ha | 6.9% |
| 2018 | 4,900 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 5,416 | · | · |
| 2016 | 2,988 | · | · |
| 2015 | 2,676 | · | · |
| 2014 | 5,527 | · | · |
| 2013 | 8,111 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 5,940 | · | · |
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 Uthukela, 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.