Burned area
satellite only5,424ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 3 Jul 2025 – 7 Jul 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ZA · South Africa · –
Bushbuckridge fire, 3 July 2025 Bushbuckridge
Out · last detection 5 Jul 2025, 11:47 UTC
The fire started on 3 July 2025 in Bushbuckridge, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,424 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 22th largest in Mpumalanga since 2016 (of 182 with a page). Number 3 in South Africa in 2025, of 14.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-27matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only5days
3 Jul 2025 to 7 Jul 2025: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 5 Jul 2025, 11:47 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only3 Jul 2025
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 3 Jul 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only198
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 93 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 3 Jul 2025 – 7 Jul 2025
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only2,413MW
Total radiative power on 3 July 2025; hotspots that day: 151.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 3 Jul 2025
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model29.6FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 3 Jul 2025, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model30.4°C · 7% RH
High of 30.4 °C and minimum humidity of 7% on 6 July 2025; gusts of 55 km/h on 7 July 2025.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 3 Jul 2025 – 7 Jul 2025
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 4 July 2025 → 7 July 2025.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 27 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 5,424 ha
- Dates
- 3 Jul 2025 – 7 Jul 2025
- Name
- Bushbuckridge
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/bushbuckridge-2025-07-2?v=2026-10-27A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire bushbuckridge-2025-07-2.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-07-03 | 151 | 2,413 | 27.3 | 12.3 | 29 | 15.6 | 33.8 | 0 | 29.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-04 | 46 | 190 | 29.6 | 15 | 12 | 19.7 | 40 | 0 | 46.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-05 | 1 | 4 | 27.5 | 10.6 | 10 | 13.1 | 28.1 | 0 | 41.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2025-07-06 | 0 | 0 | 30.4 | 12.3 | 7 | 16.8 | 36 | 0 | 50.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2025-07-07 | 0 | 0 | 22.4 | 13.9 | 25 | 30.4 | 55.4 | 0.1 | 54.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2025-07-08 | 0 | 0 | 21.7 | 12 | 41 | 19.1 | 37.4 | 0 | 31.8 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-09 | 0 | 0 | 23.1 | 8.1 | 33 | 9.8 | 23.8 | 0 | 25.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-10 | 0 | 0 | 25.6 | 10 | 25 | 12 | 28.8 | 0 | 29.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-11 | 0 | 0 | 27.5 | 10.4 | 17 | 16.2 | 35.3 | 0 | 39.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-12 | 0 | 0 | 25.7 | 10 | 20 | 27.2 | 52.6 | 0 | 51.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2025-07-13 | 0 | 0 | 24.1 | 13.7 | 43 | 20.2 | 34.6 | 0 | 32.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-14 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 12.3 | 24 | 15.4 | 33.5 | 0 | 34.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-15 | 0 | 0 | 28.7 | 14.2 | 22 | 10.4 | 24.5 | 0 | 32.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-16 | 0 | 0 | 28.7 | 13.8 | 24 | 12.6 | 29.5 | 0 | 34.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-07-17 | 0 | 0 | 27.3 | 12.9 | 24 | 14.7 | 32.8 | 0 | 36.6 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 5,424ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 3 Jul 2025 – 7 Jul 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 3 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 198
- in a single hotspot: 93 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 869MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
3 Jul7 Jul
5 Jul 2025
How it evolved, day by day
3 Jul
4 Jul
5 Jul
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
30°high
55km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,361 ha in 2021.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Bushbuckridge where it started5,440 ha reached on 3 Jul0.5 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
Started with 60 days without rain: 10.0 % of the area in South Africa
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jul | 27.3 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 4 Jul | 29.6 °C | 12 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Jul | 27.5 °C | 10 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 6 Jul | 30.4 °C | 7 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 7 Jul | 22.4 °C | 25 % | 55 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Jul after | 21.7 °C | 41 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Jul after | 23.1 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 10 Jul after | 25.6 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 11 Jul after | 27.5 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 Jul after | 25.7 °C | 20 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 13 Jul after | 24.1 °C | 43 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 14 Jul after | 28.0 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Jul after | 28.7 °C | 22 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Jul after | 28.7 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Jul after | 27.3 °C | 24 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 29.6, a minimum humidity of 29% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 37.
FWI at the start
29.6
Minimum humidity
29 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Bushbuckridge fire, 3 July 2025
5,424 ha
5 days
FWI 29.6
Min. humidity 29 %
Ba-Phalaborwa fire, September 2022
4,697 ha
5 days
FWI 26.1
Min. humidity 29 %
73 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.9 mm on 20 Sept.
Lepele-Nkumpi fire, July 2017
3,650 ha
6 days
FWI 27.8
Min. humidity 28 %
180 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Magude fire, July 2021
3,282 ha
3 days
FWI 32.2
Min. humidity 30 %
62 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Mbombela fire, August 2024
2,181 ha
2 days
FWI 32.4
Min. humidity 30 %
94 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Thaba Chweu fire, September 2021
2,911 ha
2 days
FWI 25.0
Min. humidity 32 %
129 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 29 Sept.
What happened to them
- 4 days
- median duration
- 3,340 ha
- median area
- 11 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 1.5 mm
- rain at the end (median; 19 of 37 had it)
It was 1.6 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 5 days, against 4 days.
Only 11 of its 37 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 18 of 37, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
55km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 7 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 19 of 37, with a median of 1.5 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 26 Jun 2025
After · 14 Jul 2025
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 6 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 67 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak67 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1068 µg/m³
Optical depth0.38
WHO 15
1 Jul3 Jul5 Jul7 Jul
Good
Fair
Moderate
Poor
Very poor
Extremely poor
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 198Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV
Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bushbuckridge fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 July 2025 to 7 July 2025 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 July 2025 to 4 July 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,424 hectares (54.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bushbuckridge (5,440 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Africa (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 37. Their median duration was 4 days and their median area 3,340 ha; 11 % went past 10,000 ha. Only 11 of its 37 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 18 of 37, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 10177 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 4 July 2025 → 7 July 2025.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 July 2025 to 4 July 2025. 198 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.