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Senqu fire, October 2021 Senqu

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2021, 23:35 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2021 in Senqu, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,942 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 107th largest in Eastern Cape since 2016 (of 185 with a page). Number 66 in South Africa in 2021, of 156.

Burnt area
2,942ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
6 Oct 2021 – 12 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Oct
2021
Heat detections
63
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
0
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
148MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

11 Oct 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct12 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 2021 · 28 MW · 6 7 Oct 2021 · 482 MW · 34 8 Oct 2021 · 1 MW · 1 9 Oct 2021 · 205 MW · 16 11 Oct 2021 · 21 MW · 6
6 Oct 7 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

24°high
60km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 628 ha in 2016, 57 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Senqu where it started
    2,953 ha reached on 6 Oct
    0.4 %

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)
6 Oct 18.0 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 0
7 Oct 21.6 °C 34 % 51 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 2
8 Oct 17.5 °C 31 % 60 km/h 4.0 mm Very low 0
9 Oct 17.9 °C 23 % 48 km/h 4.5 mm Very low 0
10 Oct 13.1 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
11 Oct 20.5 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
12 Oct 23.7 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
13 Oct after 24.6 °C 20 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
14 Oct after 25.7 °C 13 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Oct after 25.0 °C 19 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
16 Oct after 15.0 °C 26 % 50 km/h 1.4 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Sept 2021
After · 19 Oct 2021

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 · 63Every 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 Senqu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 October 2021 and 12 October 2021: 7 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 2,942 hectares (29.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Senqu (2,953 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class Low.
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.

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. 63 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.