Free tools · Measured from space

Heat in Ward 23, eThekwini

Summer 2025/26: the ground in Ward 23, eThekwini reached about 39 °C on clear mornings. That is the ground (roofs, roads, soil), not the air.

Land surface temperature is how hot the ground itself is: roofs, roads, bare soil and leaves, as a satellite sees them from above. Landsat passes at about 10 in the morning and sees only through clear skies. It is not the air temperature a weather station gives: on a sunny day the ground is often 10 to 20 degrees hotter than the air, and hard, dark, dry surfaces heat up most while trees, grass and water stay cooler.

What it is not: not the afternoon peak, not the night, not the air you feel in the shade, and not a reading at any one house. A month with clouds rests on few clear looks.

Summer 2025/26

38.9 °CThe ground, not the airDecember to February, clear mornings
2022/23Hottest summer since 201439.3 °C; the coolest was 2025/26, 38.9 °C

Every summer since 2023

The shape of a year

Each month’s average since 2014, clear mornings. Bars start at 18 °C.

Show the numbers

Land surface temperature by calendar month, since 2014: every figure
When or what	Figure
January	39.0 °C
February	37.7 °C
March	33.3 °C
April	28.0 °C
May	24.6 °C
June	21.0 °C
July	20.8 °C
August	23.6 °C
September	29.0 °C
October	32.8 °C
November	30.9 °C
December	36.3 °C

Month by month

Month	Land surface temperature	Clear looks
October 2026	32.8 °C	0.5
September 2026	28.1 °C	0.6
August 2026	24.3 °C	0.7
July 2026	19.9 °C	1.0
June 2026	22.9 °C	0.6
May 2026	24.9 °C	0.6
April 2026	29.9 °C	0.7
March 2026	Seen too little	0.0
February 2026	37.2 °C	0.7
January 2026	40.6 °C	0.5
December 2025	Seen too little	0.0
November 2025	Seen too little	0.1
October 2025	34.5 °C	0.6
September 2025	27.5 °C	0.5
August 2025	22.7 °C	0.3
July 2025	20.1 °C	0.5
June 2025	20.4 °C	0.6
May 2025	23.1 °C	0.4
April 2025	Seen too little	0.0
March 2025	Seen too little	0.2
February 2025	Seen too little	0.1
January 2025	Seen too little	0.2
December 2024	34.8 °C	0.4
November 2024	30.9 °C	0.3

“Clear looks” is how many times the average 240 m patch of the place was seen through clear sky that month. Under one, part of the place was not seen at all, so the figure leans on the part that was.

eThekwini and its wards · Every municipality, ranked

Source

Measured from space by the American Landsat satellites: the ground, not the air.

How we worked this out

Landsat 5 to 2011, Landsat 7 to bridge the gaps, Landsat 8 and 9 from 2013: different satellites pass at slightly different times, so compare summers within the same years first.

What we changed: we kept only the clear land cells (no cloud, cloud shadow, snow or water, with a margin round each cloud), read them at 480 m, and averaged them over each 2026 ward each month; larger places are the sums of their wards.

Landsat imagery courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey (Landsat Collection 2 surface temperature, through Digital Earth Africa’s copy).

Dataset: land surface temperature by ward, release of 13 November 2026.