Gemsbok fire, January 2026 Gemsbok
The fire started on 20 January 2026 in Gemsbok, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,468 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 183th largest in Kgalagadi since 2016 (of 423 with a page). Number 64 in Botswana in 2026, of 171.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,468ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 20 Jan 2026 – 24 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 20 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 104
- in a single hotspot: 114 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 424MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 28 Jan.
This area had burned before
15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 672 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
-
Gemsbok where it started4,467 ha reached on 20 Jan0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jan | 36.8 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 21 Jan | 35.3 °C | 15 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 22 Jan | 35.2 °C | 19 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 23 Jan | 35.7 °C | 19 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 24 Jan | 37.2 °C | 15 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Jan after | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 26 Jan after | 36.7 °C | 21 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 27 Jan after | 35.1 °C | 31 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 49 |
| 28 Jan after | 36.7 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 1.3 mm | Very high 40 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 20 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 104Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Gemsbok fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 January 2026 and 24 January 2026: 5 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 4,468 hectares (44.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Gemsbok (4,467 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Botswana (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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 104 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.
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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.