Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Waterberg
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 6,475 fire detections seen from space; 3,349 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2023, 10,822.
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
- 6,475Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 3,349 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 69 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 65 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 127 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 193 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 39 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 37 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 137 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 386 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 1,553 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 998 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 1,008 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 1,863 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 396 ha burnt (0.009% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 212 ha burnt (0.005% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 766 ha burnt (0.017% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 765 ha burnt (0.017% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 338 ha burnt (0.008% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 872 ha burnt (0.019% 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 | 1,863 | 1,649 | 1,786 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 1,008 | 949 | 898 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 998 | 927 | 1,111 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 1,553 | 1,476 | 1,755 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 386 | 364 | 354 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 137 | 132 | 116 | 872 ha | 0.019% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 37 | 37 | 44 | 338 ha | 0.008% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 39 | 39 | 54 | 765 ha | 0.017% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 193 | 161 | 163 | 766 ha | 0.017% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 127 | 109 | 156 | 212 ha | 0.005% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 65 | 60 | 68 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 69 | 57 | 105 | 396 ha | 0.009% | 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
- 202310,822 fire detections, most in September 2023; 147,987 ha burnt
- 20248,546 fire detections, most in September 2024; 127,594 ha burnt
- 20157,688 fire detections, most in October 2015
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2023, 147,987 ha (3.3% of the place); 2024, 127,594 ha (2.8% of the place); 2021, 62,715 ha (1.4% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 6,341 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 4,176 | 43,302 ha | 0.97% |
| 2024 | 8,546 | 127,594 ha | 2.8% |
| 2023 | 10,822 | 147,987 ha | 3.3% |
| 2022 | 5,153 | 47,964 ha | 1.1% |
| 2021 | 5,736 | 62,715 ha | 1.4% |
| 2020 | 3,111 | 21,125 ha | 0.47% |
| 2019 | 4,084 | 50,454 ha | 1.1% |
| 2018 | 5,364 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 5,024 | · | · |
| 2016 | 2,325 | · | · |
| 2015 | 7,688 | · | · |
| 2014 | 4,814 | · | · |
| 2013 | 6,896 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 4,867 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019. A larger place’s figures are the sums of its 2026 wards.
Everything we hold for Waterberg, on one page
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.