Thaba Chweu fire, 30 August 2019 Thaba Chweu
The fire started on 30 August 2019 in Thaba Chweu, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,537 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 126th largest in Mpumalanga since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 75 in South Africa in 2019, of 130.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,537ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 30 Aug 2019 – 2 Sept 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Aug
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 68
- in a single hotspot: 83 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 162MW
- 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. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 6 Sept.
This area had burned before
28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 723 ha in 2016.
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
-
Thaba Chweu where it started2,556 ha reached on 30 Aug0.4 %
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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Aug | 27.8 °C | 18 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 31 Aug | 25.7 °C | 8 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 1 Sept | 22.5 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 2 Sept | 25.6 °C | 9 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Sept after | 25.1 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Sept after | 27.0 °C | 15 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 Sept after | 26.0 °C | 21 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 Sept after | 12.3 °C | 80 % | 37 km/h | 4.0 mm | Very low 1 |
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.
Detections table · 68Every 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 Thaba Chweu fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 August 2019 and 2 September 2019: 4 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 2,537 hectares (25.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Thaba Chweu (2,556 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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. 68 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.