Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 5, Ephraim Mogale
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 112 fire detections seen from space; 86 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 122.
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
- 112Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 86 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 | 3 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 10 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| April 2026 | 7 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 2 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 34 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 12 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 20 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 8 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 12 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 | 29 ha burnt (0.082% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 20 ha burnt (0.058% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 5.8 ha burnt (0.016% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 31 ha burnt (0.088% 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 | 8 | 7 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 8 | 8 | 14 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 20 | 18 | 24 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 12 | 12 | 22 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 34 | 34 | 15 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 31 ha | 0.088% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 5.8 ha | 0.016% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 20 ha | 0.058% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 10 | 7 | 16 | 29 ha | 0.082% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 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
- 2024122 fire detections, most in August 2024; 552 ha burnt
- 2022111 fire detections, most in May 2022; 46 ha burnt
- 202397 fire detections, most in October 2023; 776 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2023, 776 ha (2.2% of the place); 2024, 552 ha (1.6% of the place); 2025, 271 ha (0.77% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 109 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 93 | 271 ha | 0.77% |
| 2024 | 122 | 552 ha | 1.6% |
| 2023 | 97 | 776 ha | 2.2% |
| 2022 | 111 | 46 ha | 0.13% |
| 2021 | 73 | 14 ha | 0.041% |
| 2020 | 67 | 50 ha | 0.14% |
| 2019 | 50 | 72 ha | 0.21% |
| 2018 | 41 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 77 | · | · |
| 2016 | 31 | · | · |
| 2015 | 67 | · | · |
| 2014 | 89 | · | · |
| 2013 | 83 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 64 | · | · |
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.