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Cederberg fire, March 2025 Cederberg

Out · last detection 18 Mar 2025, 23:23 UTC

The fire started on 8 March 2025 in Cederberg, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,819 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Western Cape since 2016 (of 164 with a page). Number 4 in South Africa in 2025, of 87.

Burnt area
17,819ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
8 Mar 2025 – 19 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 Mar
2025
Heat detections
889
in a single hotspot: 208 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Energy released
10.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Mar 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Mar19 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

89101112131415161718

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
52km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.7 mm on 20 Mar.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,376 ha in 2016, 388 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Cederberg where it started
    17,847 ha reached on 8 Mar
    2.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
8 Mar 27.6 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Mar 22.1 °C 37 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Mar 24.0 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Mar 28.8 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Mar 30.4 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Mar 30.0 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Mar 28.4 °C 30 % 52 km/h 1.4 mm High 28
15 Mar 24.1 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
16 Mar 22.8 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
17 Mar 26.1 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Mar 30.8 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Mar 31.9 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Mar after 21.6 °C 44 % 33 km/h 9.7 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 1 Mar 2025
After · 26 Mar 2025

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 · Copernicus

On 15 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 86 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak86 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1090 µg/m³
Optical depth0.50
678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 889Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Africa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cederberg fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 March 2025 and 19 March 2025: 12 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,819 hectares (178.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cederberg (17,847 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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.

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

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 10177 · 112.

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.