Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 10, Thaba Chweu
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 496 fire detections seen from space; 472 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 1,001.
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
- 496Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 472 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 1 fire detection |
| December 2025 | 22 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 2 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 17 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| April 2026 | 2 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 59 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 99 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 198 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 76 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 7 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 12 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 7.7 ha burnt (0.007% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% 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 | 464 ha burnt (0.43% 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 | 12 | 10 | 12 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 7 | 6 | 9 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 76 | 70 | 59 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 198 | 191 | 211 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 99 | 98 | 92 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 59 | 59 | 54 | 464 ha | 0.43% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 17 | 16 | 12 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 22 | 21 | 16 | 7.7 ha | 0.007% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 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
- 20241,001 fire detections, most in June 2024; 16,073 ha burnt
- 2019814 fire detections, most in July 2019; 12,097 ha burnt
- 2016743 fire detections, most in August 2016
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 16,073 ha (15.0% of the place); 2019, 12,097 ha (11.3% of the place); 2021, 10,948 ha (10.2% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 473 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 570 | 9,918 ha | 9.2% |
| 2024 | 1,001 | 16,073 ha | 15.0% |
| 2023 | 569 | 7,670 ha | 7.2% |
| 2022 | 566 | 8,385 ha | 7.8% |
| 2021 | 734 | 10,948 ha | 10.2% |
| 2020 | 592 | 10,504 ha | 9.8% |
| 2019 | 814 | 12,097 ha | 11.3% |
| 2018 | 617 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 510 | · | · |
| 2016 | 743 | · | · |
| 2015 | 714 | · | · |
| 2014 | 612 | · | · |
| 2013 | 682 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 563 | · | · |
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.