Burned area
satellite only9,774ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 1 Sept 2016 – 12 Sept 2016
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ZA · South Africa · –
Mogalakwena fire, 1 September 2016 Mogalakwena
Out · last detection 11 Sept 2016, 23:32 UTC
The fire started on 1 September 2016 in Mogalakwena, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,774 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 8th largest in Limpopo since 2016 (of 161 with a page). Number 9 in South Africa in 2016, of 71.
The power measured by the satellite is low (14.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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 only12days
1 Sept 2016 to 12 Sept 2016: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 11 Sept 2016, 23:32 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 only1 Sept 2016
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 1 Sept 2016
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only327
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 14 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 1 Sept 2016 – 12 Sept 2016
+− 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 only221MW
Total radiative power on 3 September 2016; hotspots that day: 68.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 3 Sept 2016
+− 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
model50.6FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 35.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 1 Sept 2016, 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
model34.7°C · 14% RH
High of 34.7 °C and minimum humidity of 14% on 9 September 2016; gusts of 50 km/h on 10 September 2016.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 1 Sept 2016 – 12 Sept 2016
- 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: 11 September 2016 → 12 September 2016.
-
· 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
- 9,774 ha
- Dates
- 1 Sept 2016 – 12 Sept 2016
- Name
- Mogalakwena
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/mogalakwena-2016-09?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 mogalakwena-2016-09.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-09-01 | 10 | 20 | 25.7 | 9.9 | 15 | 13.2 | 31.3 | 0 | 50.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2016-09-02 | 52 | 132 | 26.3 | 9.6 | 21 | 12.1 | 27 | 0 | 44.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-09-03 | 68 | 221 | 27.6 | 10.6 | 19 | 11 | 20.2 | 0 | 38.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-09-04 | 38 | 164 | 28.3 | 12.7 | 18 | 12.8 | 27 | 0 | 43 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-09-05 | 58 | 200 | 29.6 | 13.8 | 15 | 12.7 | 26.6 | 0 | 45.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-09-06 | 34 | 92 | 31.1 | 15.3 | 13 | 13.5 | 32 | 0 | 55.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2016-09-07 | 13 | 32 | 32.3 | 13.5 | 15 | 14 | 34.2 | 0 | 57.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2016-09-08 | 22 | 82 | 33.3 | 15.1 | 15 | 13.9 | 38.5 | 0 | 57.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2016-09-09 | 11 | 31 | 34.7 | 16.2 | 14 | 13.7 | 34.2 | 0 | 58.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2016-09-10 | 14 | 60 | 28 | 16.3 | 28 | 22.1 | 49.7 | 0 | 63.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2016-09-11 | 7 | 24 | 25.5 | 13 | 37 | 20.5 | 44.6 | 0 | 45 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-09-12 | 0 | 0 | 28.4 | 13.4 | 27 | 17.5 | 39.2 | 0 | 44.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-09-13 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 12.2 | 12 | 23.7 | 47.2 | 0 | 56.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2016-09-14 | 0 | 0 | 24.8 | 14.5 | 37 | 24 | 51.5 | 0 | 54 | extremo | 0 |
| 2016-09-15 | 0 | 0 | 30.2 | 13.7 | 23 | 17.9 | 42.1 | 0 | 49.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2016-09-16 | 0 | 0 | 34.5 | 15.6 | 14 | 19.4 | 44.6 | 0 | 71.7 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2016-09-17 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 19.5 | 13 | 18 | 38.5 | 0.5 | 59.4 | extremo | 0 |
| 2016-09-18 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 14.6 | 61 | 19.7 | 41 | 0.6 | 21.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2016-09-19 | 0 | 0 | 17.6 | 14 | 72 | 13.5 | 28.8 | 4.3 | 4.7 | muy_bajo | 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
- 9,774ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 1 Sept 2016 – 12 Sept 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 1 Sept
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 327
- in a single hotspot: 14 MW
- Danger at start
- 51
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 96MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
1 Sept12 Sept
11 Sept 2016
How it evolved, day by day
3 Sept
7 Sept
10 Sept
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
35°high
50km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity
It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 19 Sept.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Mogalakwena where it started9,812 ha reached on 1 Sept1.6 %
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 2015Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.
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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sept | 25.7 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Sept | 26.3 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 3 Sept | 27.6 °C | 19 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Sept | 28.3 °C | 18 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Sept | 29.6 °C | 15 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 6 Sept | 31.1 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 7 Sept | 32.3 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 8 Sept | 33.3 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 9 Sept | 34.7 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 10 Sept | 28.0 °C | 28 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 11 Sept | 25.5 °C | 37 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Sept | 28.4 °C | 27 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 13 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 12 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 14 Sept after | 24.8 °C | 37 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 15 Sept after | 30.2 °C | 23 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 16 Sept after | 34.5 °C | 14 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 17 Sept after | 31.0 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 18 Sept after | 18.0 °C | 61 % | 41 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 22 |
| 19 Sept after | 17.6 °C | 72 % | 29 km/h | 4.3 mm | Very low 5 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 50.6, a minimum humidity of 15% and 35 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 12.
FWI at the start
50.6
Minimum humidity
15 %
Days without rain
35
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Mogalakwena fire, 1 September 2016
9,774 ha
12 days
FWI 50.6
Min. humidity 15 %
Madibeng fire, August 2018
3,371 ha
2 days
FWI 48.1
Min. humidity 15 %
162 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
City of Tshwane fire, August 2017
2,215 ha
3 days
FWI 51.7
Min. humidity 14 %
204 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Moses Kotane fire, August 2017
6,540 ha
5 days
FWI 48.9
Min. humidity 19 %
209 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Bela-Bela fire, September 2018
5,620 ha
4 days
FWI 59.1
Min. humidity 15 %
166 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Madibeng fire, September 2017
4,243 ha
5 days
FWI 49.2
Min. humidity 12 %
163 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.8 mm on 25 Sept.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 12. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
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
4.3 mmfirst rain
19 Sept7 days after it ended
50km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 12 Sept, and on 19 Sept 4.3 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
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 · 25 Aug 2016
After · 19 Sept 2016
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.
Detections table · 327Every 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
- 3,216 haMogalakwena22 July 2026 · 3 days · 4 km away
- 4,808 haMogalakwena24 September 2021 · 5 days · 5 km away
- 4,241 haMogalakwena14 August 2023 · 10 days · 11 km away
- 4,968 haMogalakwena20 August 2026 · 10 days · 12 km away
- 5,303 haMogalakwena6 September 2017 · 9 days · 13 km away
- 3,950 haMogalakwena18 July 2026 · 7 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mogalakwena fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2016 to 12 September 2016 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2016 to 11 September 2016.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,774 hectares (97.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mogalakwena (9,812 ha, 1.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.
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: 11 September 2016 → 12 September 2016.
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 1 September 2016 to 11 September 2016. 327 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 2015, 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.