Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 3, Mkhondo
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 162 fire detections seen from space; 101 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 295.
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
- 162Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 101 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 3 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 4 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 6 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 11 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 8 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 33 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 36 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 38 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 20 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 | 64 ha burnt (0.14% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 1.2 ha burnt (0.003% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 36 ha burnt (0.076% 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 | 20 | 15 | 29 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 38 | 36 | 39 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 36 | 31 | 56 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 33 | 30 | 38 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 8 | 8 | 12 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 36 ha | 0.076% | 97% |
| April 2026 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 1.2 ha | 0.003% | 97% |
| March 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 97% |
| February 2026 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 64 ha | 0.14% | 97% |
| January 2026 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 97% |
| December 2025 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 97% |
| November 2025 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 97% |
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
- 2024295 fire detections, most in October 2024; 4,838 ha burnt
- 2012271 fire detections, most in September 2012
- 2023264 fire detections, most in July 2023; 3,367 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 4,838 ha (10.3% of the place); 2019, 3,963 ha (8.4% of the place); 2022, 3,584 ha (7.6% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 155 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 207 | 1,981 ha | 4.2% |
| 2024 | 295 | 4,838 ha | 10.3% |
| 2023 | 264 | 3,367 ha | 7.1% |
| 2022 | 233 | 3,584 ha | 7.6% |
| 2021 | 193 | 2,374 ha | 5.0% |
| 2020 | 204 | 3,062 ha | 6.5% |
| 2019 | 229 | 3,963 ha | 8.4% |
| 2018 | 234 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 194 | · | · |
| 2016 | 150 | · | · |
| 2015 | 158 | · | · |
| 2014 | 175 | · | · |
| 2013 | 203 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 271 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019.
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.