Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Witzenberg
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 1,554 fire detections seen from space; 14,607 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2017, 2,353.
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
- 1,554Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 14,607 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 554 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 608 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 229 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 26 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 33 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 23 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 12 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 56 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 2,889 ha burnt (0.27% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 5,666 ha burnt (0.53% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 5,051 ha burnt (0.47% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 290 ha burnt (0.027% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 424 ha burnt (0.039% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 287 ha burnt (0.027% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% 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 | 56 | 35 | 55 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 5 | 5 | 1 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 3 | 3 | 5 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 5 | 5 | 6 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 0 | 0 | 3 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 12 | 12 | 17 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| April 2026 | 23 | 22 | 35 | 287 ha | 0.027% | 98% |
| March 2026 | 33 | 27 | 25 | 424 ha | 0.039% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 26 | 21 | 24 | 290 ha | 0.027% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 229 | 191 | 177 | 5,051 ha | 0.47% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 608 | 477 | 626 | 5,666 ha | 0.53% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 554 | 462 | 471 | 2,889 ha | 0.27% | 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
- 20172,353 fire detections, most in December 2017
- 20162,084 fire detections, most in February 2016
- 20251,854 fire detections, most in December 2025; 13,253 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 17,116 ha (1.6% of the place); 2025, 13,253 ha (1.2% of the place); 2022, 1,920 ha (0.18% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 392 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 1,854 | 13,253 ha | 1.2% |
| 2024 | 1,611 | 17,116 ha | 1.6% |
| 2023 | 196 | 1,003 ha | 0.094% |
| 2022 | 311 | 1,920 ha | 0.18% |
| 2021 | 306 | 1,753 ha | 0.16% |
| 2020 | 269 | 1,153 ha | 0.11% |
| 2019 | 206 | 913 ha | 0.085% |
| 2018 | 570 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 2,353 | · | · |
| 2016 | 2,084 | · | · |
| 2015 | 1,665 | · | · |
| 2014 | 579 | · | · |
| 2013 | 1,021 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 571 | · | · |
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.
Each ward
- Ward 1 (Nduli)
- Ward 2 (Breërivier, Montana)
- Ward 3 (Ceres)
- Ward 4 (Prince Alfred Hamlet)
- Ward 5 (Botha, Ceres)
- Ward 6 (Bella Vista)
- Ward 7 (Tulbaghweg, Wolseley)
- Ward 8 (Op die Berg, Remhoogte)
- Ward 9
- Ward 10 (Prince Alfred Hamlet)
- Ward 11 (Tulbagh, Chris Hani Informal Settlement)
- Ward 12 (Tankwa Town, Off Centre Camp)
Places in each ward: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Everything we hold for Witzenberg, 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.