Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 6, Mkhondo
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 227 fire detections seen from space; 151 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2019, 393.
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
- 227Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 151 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 3 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 7 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 13 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 33 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| April 2026 | 4 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 16 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 29 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 38 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 46 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 17 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 | 11 ha burnt (0.023% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 5.7 ha burnt (0.012% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 92 ha burnt (0.19% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 25 ha burnt (0.053% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 17 ha burnt (0.037% 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 | 19 | 14 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 17 | 17 | 19 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 46 | 44 | 40 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 38 | 36 | 86 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 29 | 29 | 36 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 16 | 16 | 20 | 17 ha | 0.037% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 25 ha | 0.053% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 92 ha | 0.19% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 33 | 30 | 20 | 5.7 ha | 0.012% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 13 | 12 | 16 | 11 ha | 0.023% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 7 | 7 | 11 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 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
- 2019393 fire detections, most in July 2019; 2,305 ha burnt
- 2020352 fire detections, most in June 2020; 2,307 ha burnt
- 2012348 fire detections, most in July 2012
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 2,968 ha (6.3% of the place); 2020, 2,307 ha (4.9% of the place); 2019, 2,305 ha (4.9% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 217 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 190 | 2,018 ha | 4.3% |
| 2024 | 275 | 2,968 ha | 6.3% |
| 2023 | 250 | 1,813 ha | 3.8% |
| 2022 | 310 | 1,634 ha | 3.4% |
| 2021 | 293 | 2,239 ha | 4.7% |
| 2020 | 352 | 2,307 ha | 4.9% |
| 2019 | 393 | 2,305 ha | 4.9% |
| 2018 | 325 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 334 | · | · |
| 2016 | 272 | · | · |
| 2015 | 210 | · | · |
| 2014 | 298 | · | · |
| 2013 | 337 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 348 | · | · |
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.