AURSEEAursee · fire file
Fire near Harrismith, South Africa, 11 October 2026
What the satellites saw
Every pixel VIIRS returned inside 6 km of this fire: 2 in daylight, 2 on the night pass. A pixel is 375 m, so the squares are drawn at the size the measurement has.
Where
- Active fire
226 - Burned before
223 - Lightning first
none here - Near a road
209
Coastline and borders from Natural Earth at 110 m — regional context, not a survey. Each layer above is its own address, so a view can be shared.
A fire was first detected here at 11:15 UTC on 11 October 2026, 31 km ESE of Harrismith in Free State, South Africa. At its most recent pass it was putting out 9 megawatts of radiative power across 4 separate satellite detections.
The detections sit inside a single kilometre of ground.
No settlement in our index has population recorded within 25 km.
When the satellite first saw it
In local solar time the first detection falls at 13:13, which is the early afternoon. VIIRS passes about 01:30 and 13:30 local solar, so this is when the satellite looked: the fire began somewhere in the twelve hours before.
It was seen across 12.2 hours of satellite passes.
50% of the detections came from the night pass.
What this ground has done before
This ground has burned before. Our archive records fire here in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, across 87 days, most recently on 2026-10-09.
Wind and weather
At the fire, wind was 14 km/h from the NW, carrying smoke and embers towards the SE. Temperature 26°C, relative humidity 51%.
Where analysis would go
Our screening pass scores this fire 0.70. The score ranks where analysis is worth spending.
What the screen noticed: 4 distinct events; activity compressed 14x versus a week-long release; 75% of events first seen at night (local solar), when machinery is not working.
Read from satellite detections and weather. No roads, no land cover, no ground visit.
What else this page knows
Each of these is attached to every fire, including this one.
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A detection is a heat signature at 375 m, about three hours behind the satellite. Cloud, smoke and canopy hide fires; each satellite passes twice a day. Not for evacuation or life-safety decisions — follow your local fire service.
Written from our own measurements; composed. Open this fire on the live map.