How long did the Thaba Chweu fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 August 2026 and 6 August 2026: 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 2,802 hectares (28.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Thaba Chweu (2,816 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 23.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.

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.

ZA · South Africa · 2026-08-03 → 2026-08-06

Thaba Chweu fire, August 2026 Thaba Chweu

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2026, 23:44 UTC

The fire started on 3 August 2026 in Thaba Chweu, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,802 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 105th largest in Mpumalanga since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 83 in South Africa in 2026, of 147.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Thaba Chweu · 2021 Thaba Chweu · 2024 Thaba Chweu · 2016 Thaba Chweu · 2017

Burnt area: 2,802ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 3 Aug 2026 – 6 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 3 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 35; in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 83MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Aug6 Aug

Play back 6 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

4 Aug 5 Aug 6 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

23°high

30km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.7 mm on 10 Aug.

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 132 ha in 2018, 1,019 ha in 2020, 719 ha in 2021, 26 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

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 started

2,816 ha reached on 2 Aug

0.5 %

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)
3 Aug	19.2 °C	16 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
4 Aug	19.2 °C	19 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Aug	20.2 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Aug	23.4 °C	10 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Aug after	20.4 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Aug after	18.4 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Aug after	18.8 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Aug after	17.3 °C	38 %	48 km/h	6.7 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Jul 2026

After · 13 Aug 2026

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 5 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak54 µg/m³

Days over the guideline6 days

PM1055 µg/m³

Optical depth0.43

WHO 15

31123456789

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 · 35Every 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

All fires in South Africa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Thaba Chweu fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 August 2026 and 6 August 2026: 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 2,802 hectares (28.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Thaba Chweu (2,816 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 23.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 35 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.

Where it burned