Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 13, Thaba Chweu
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 197 fire detections seen from space; 621 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 901.
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
- 197Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 621 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 0 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 3 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 6 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| April 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 7 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 67 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 18 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 36 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 42 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 14 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 | 82 ha burnt (0.088% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 44 ha burnt (0.047% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 157 ha burnt (0.17% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 9.3 ha burnt (0.010% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 329 ha burnt (0.35% 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 | 14 | 14 | 13 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 42 | 40 | 41 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 36 | 34 | 41 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 18 | 18 | 54 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 67 | 67 | 63 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 7 | 7 | 13 | 329 ha | 0.35% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9.3 ha | 0.010% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 157 ha | 0.17% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 44 ha | 0.047% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 82 ha | 0.088% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 0 | 0 | 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
- 2024901 fire detections, most in August 2024; 11,646 ha burnt
- 2019698 fire detections, most in July 2019; 7,545 ha burnt
- 2013545 fire detections, most in August 2013
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 11,646 ha (12.5% of the place); 2023, 8,202 ha (8.8% of the place); 2019, 7,545 ha (8.1% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 194 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 364 | 4,799 ha | 5.2% |
| 2024 | 901 | 11,646 ha | 12.5% |
| 2023 | 481 | 8,202 ha | 8.8% |
| 2022 | 227 | 3,638 ha | 3.9% |
| 2021 | 378 | 4,910 ha | 5.3% |
| 2020 | 331 | 3,531 ha | 3.8% |
| 2019 | 698 | 7,545 ha | 8.1% |
| 2018 | 378 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 233 | · | · |
| 2016 | 251 | · | · |
| 2015 | 324 | · | · |
| 2014 | 525 | · | · |
| 2013 | 545 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 439 | · | · |
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.