Newcastle fire, 10 August 2024 Newcastle
The fire started on 10 August 2024 in Newcastle, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,932 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 74th largest in KwaZulu-Natal since 2016 (of 171 with a page). Number 72 in South Africa in 2024, of 121.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,932ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 10 Aug 2024 – 14 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 10 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 177
- in a single hotspot: 111 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 364MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2017, 1,467 ha in 2018, 1,441 ha in 2020, 1,330 ha in 2021, 22 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,518 ha that had burned before.
- 1,467 ha Newcastle fire, August 2018 2,227 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 196 ha Newcastle fire, September 2020 4,084 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Phumelela fire, July 2017 2,204 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Newcastle where it started2,949 ha reached on 10 Aug1.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Aug | 25.0 °C | 14 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 11 Aug | 25.9 °C | 9 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 12 Aug | 19.1 °C | 30 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Aug | 23.9 °C | 16 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 14 Aug | 21.4 °C | 7 % | 64 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 15 Aug after | 22.3 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 16 Aug after | 25.1 °C | 8 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 17 Aug after | 25.6 °C | 10 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 18 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 19 Aug after | 22.5 °C | 32 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 9 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 22 Aug after | 14.4 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 39 |
| 23 Aug after | 21.6 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Aug after | 24.1 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
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 12 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 140 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.8 times the WHO daily 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 · 177Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,084 haNewcastle9 September 2020 · 6 days · 7 km away
- 4,848 haDannhauserSeptember 2019 · 5 days · 12 km away
- 3,636 haNewcastleAugust 2026 · 8 days · 18 km away
- 9,524 haPhumelelaAugust 2017 · 5 days · 21 km away
- 3,536 haNewcastleSeptember 2026 · 2 days · 21 km away
- 4,172 haPhumelela4 September 2018 · 3 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Newcastle fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2024 and 14 August 2024: 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 2,932 hectares (29.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Newcastle (2,949 ha, 1.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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
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. 177 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 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.