Wildfires in Western Cape right now
Is anything burning in Western Cape right now? The fires the NASA satellites detected in the last 24 hours are loaded live every time you open the page, with the wind and humidity that drive them and a fire map centred on Western Cape.
Active fires, last 24 hours
6 active fire spots (11 satellite detections) in Western Cape in the last 24 hours.
Snapshot of 2026-10-16 14:15 UTC (NASA FIRMS). Updating live…
The strongest fires now
| Power | Where (lat, lon) | Seen | Pixels |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18.3 MW | -33.066, 18.373 | 15 Oct, 12:36 UTC | 2 |
| 4.5 MW | -33.532, 19.055 | 15 Oct, 12:36 UTC | 3 |
| 2.4 MW | -30.670, 23.988 | 15 Oct, 12:38 UTC | 1 |
| 1.7 MW | -32.938, 18.759 | 15 Oct, 00:13 UTC | 3 |
| 0.8 MW | -32.961, 18.045 | 15 Oct, 23:56 UTC | 1 |
| 0.8 MW | -33.840, 18.530 | 15 Oct, 23:56 UTC | 1 |
The hottest pixel of each ~10 km spot, strongest first. Tap a position to open it on the fire map.
Fire weather in Western Cape now
Dry and windy right now: the kind of weather in which fires spread fast.
Snapshot of 2026-10-16 14:15 UTC (Open-Meteo). Updating live…
Fire map of Western Cape
Each dot is a 375 m pixel hot enough to be burning, coloured by its power; zoomed out they merge into a heat map.
The last 7 days
NASA FIRMS 7-day file as of 2026-10-16 11:04 UTC, updated when the page is rebuilt.
More maps for Western Cape
Wind · Humidity · Dry lightning · Air quality and smoke · About the fire map
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About wildfire detection in Western Cape
The page watches the box 17.75, -34.85, 24.25, -30.4 (west, south, east, north), roughly Western Cape, so near the edges it can include fires just across the border. A detection is a 375 m pixel that the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite saw hotter than its surroundings; one fire front is usually dozens of pixels, which is why they are grouped into spots about 10 km apart. Industrial heat sources and gas flares can show up as well.
Questions
- Are there wildfires in Western Cape right now?
- The first box above counts the active fire spots detected by satellite in Western Cape in the last 24 hours, loaded live from NASA FIRMS when the page opens. Zero means the satellite saw no fire on its last passes, not that there is none: clouds and thick smoke hide fires.
- How up to date is this wildfire map?
- NOAA-20 passes over every place about twice a day, and NASA publishes the detections within about three hours. The page reloads the latest file every 10 minutes while it is open.
- What does fire radiative power (MW) mean?
- It is the heat the fire radiates, measured from orbit: a campfire is under 1 MW, a burning field a few MW, a wildfire front hundreds. It tells how intense a fire is, not how big the burned area is.
- Can I use this map for evacuation decisions?
- No. Satellite detections are hours old and miss fires under clouds. Follow the local fire service and civil protection for warnings and evacuation orders.
Wildfire maps nearby
KwaZulu-Natal · Botswana · Namibia · Limpopo and Mpumalanga · Zimbabwe · Zambia
How this page works
Active fires come from NASA FIRMS (VIIRS 375 m on NOAA-20, global file of the last 24 hours), the same feed that drives the live fire map, filtered to the box of Western Cape; the 7-day figures come from the FIRMS 7-day file when the page is built. Wind, humidity and temperature are the current conditions from Open-Meteo at the centre of the region. Data courtesy of NASA FIRMS (LANCE).