Burned area
satellite only9,028ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 5 Nov 2026 – 9 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BW · Botswana · –
Gemsbok fire, 5 November 2026 Gemsbok
Dying down · last detection 9 Nov 2026, 13:10 UTC
The fire started on 5 November 2026 in Gemsbok, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,028 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 44 in Botswana in 2026, of 287.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
Use this data
Compare with…
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Fire page data · version 2026-11-09matches 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
From 5 Nov 2026 to today: still being detected.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 9 Nov 2026, 13:10 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 only5 Nov 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 5 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only329
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 116 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (NOAA-20)
- Date
- 5 Nov 2026 – 9 Nov 2026
+− 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 only2,869MW
Total radiative power on 9 November 2026; hotspots that day: 165.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 9 Nov 2026
+− 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
model84.9FWI · very extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 17.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 5 Nov 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− 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
model37.7°C · 18% RH
High of 37.7 °C and minimum humidity of 18% on 5 November 2026; gusts of 66 km/h on 5 November 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 5 Nov 2026 – 9 Nov 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− 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 7 November 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
-
logArea: 8,541 → 9,028 ha.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
logArea: 4,594 → 8,541 ha.
-
logPage published (4,594 ha).
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/gemsbok-2026-11?v=2026-11-09A 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 gemsbok-2026-11.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-05 | 7 | 201 | 37.7 | 20.4 | 18 | 28.1 | 65.5 | 0.5 | 84.9 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-06 | 136 | 224 | 33.4 | 18.2 | 14 | 18.4 | 33.5 | 0 | 58.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-07 | 63 | 1,035 | 30.7 | 15.3 | 16 | 19.8 | 34.6 | 0 | 64.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-08 | 34 | 323 | 32.5 | 14.2 | 8 | 20.9 | 38.2 | 0 | 70.7 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-09 | 165 | 2,869 | 36.7 | 18.4 | 15 | 24.1 | 44.6 | 0 | 78.8 | muy_extremo | 1 |
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), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
Is it still active?
No detections since 9 Nov 2026, 13:10 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. 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.
- Burnt area
- 9,028ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 5 Nov 2026 – 9 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 5 Nov
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 329
- in a single hotspot: 116 MW
- Danger at start
- 85
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 930MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
5 Nov9 Nov
9 Nov 2026
How it evolved, day by day
5 Nov
6 Nov
7 Nov
8 Nov
9 Nov
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
38°high
66km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity
It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 307 ha in 2017, 2,137 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 started9,073 ha reached on 5 Nov0.4 %
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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
Started with Strong wind: 9.5 % of the area in Botswana
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Nov | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 66 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very extreme 85 |
| 6 Nov | 33.4 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 7 Nov | 30.7 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 8 Nov | 32.5 °C | 8 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 9 Nov | 36.7 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 29 Oct 2026
After · 9 Nov 2026
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 5 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1022 µg/m³
Optical depth0.82
WHO 15
3456
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 · 329Every 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 Gemsbok fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 November 2026 to 9 November 2026 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 November 2026 to 8 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,028 hectares (90.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Gemsbok (9,073 ha, 0.4 %).
- Is the Gemsbok fire still active?
- No fire detections since 9 Nov 2026, 13:10 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 85, class Very 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
History of this page · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 7 November 2026.
- Area: 8,541 → 9,028 ha.
- Area: 4,594 → 8,541 ha.
- Page published (4,594 ha).
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 5 November 2026 to 8 November 2026. 329 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.