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How many fire detections did satellites make in the last 24 hours?

As of 5 October 2026, 23:58 UTC (the time of the newest detection), NASA FIRMS's 24 hour global files for the VIIRS instruments on Suomi NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 hold 244,215 fire detections in 18,667 cells of a quarter of a degree, after our collector left out 31,367 low-confidence detections. A detection is a place where a satellite saw heat, not a confirmed fire.

Data as of 5 October 2026, 23:58 UTC, the time of the newest detection in the files. Data from NASA FIRMS (LANCE).

Open the live fires screen

• 244,215Fire detections in the 24 hour files
• 18,667Quarter-degree cells with detections
• 31,367Low-confidence detections left out

See also: our guide to reading this data; live pages: satellite count, earthquakes today, aurora tonight, asteroid close approaches, tropical storms now, all live numbers right now.

Detections by satellite

Our collector reads NASA FIRMS's 24 hour global files for Suomi NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21, one file each. This set of files holds detections from all 3. The same fire seen by two satellites, or on two passes, counts twice, so these are detections, not fires.

Where the detections were densest

The ten quarter-degree cells with the most detections. The nearest place is the nearest of the 34,152 places in our place list (GeoNames towns and cities of about 15,000 people or more), measured from the centre of the cell, so it can be far from the detections themselves. If the nearest place is more than 300 km away, we give only the coordinates.

Map of the detections

Each dot is a square of 1 degree with at least one detection: 4,811 squares in all. 60,049 of the detections were north of the equator and 184,166 south of it.

What a detection is

A detection means a satellite instrument reported heat at that spot at that time. It is not a confirmed wildfire, and this page does not measure or estimate how large a fire is. A place with no detections is not proof that there was no fire.

How this page is made

• Source: NASA FIRMS's 24 hour global files for the VIIRS instrument on Suomi NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21, read by our collector every hour. NASA's LANCE page says near real-time users usually need data within three hours; the exact latency of these files is not confirmed from a NASA page.
• Our choices: detections NASA marks as low confidence are left out (31,367 of the 280,686 rows read), and the rest are grouped into cells of a quarter of a degree.
• The data time is the time of the newest detection. The page is published only when that is less than 8 hours old.
• NASA asks users of the data to give its acknowledgement: We acknowledge the use of data and/or imagery from NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for Earth observations (LANCE) (https://earthdata.nasa.gov/lance), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). NASA provides the information as is.

Questions

How many fire detections were there in the last 24 hours?

244,215 in NASA FIRMS's 24 hour files to 5 October 2026, 23:58 UTC, not counting 31,367 low-confidence detections our collector leaves out.

Which satellite made the most detections?

Suomi NPP, with 82,431.

Where was the densest cell?

The cell centred at 2.875° S, 54.125° W, with 1,713 detections. The nearest place in our list is Mojuí dos Campos, Brazil, 61 km from the cell centre.

Is every detection a wildfire?

No. A detection means a satellite instrument reported heat at that spot at that time. This page does not say what burned or how large a fire is.

Sources

• NASA LANCE: FIRMS active fire data. Latency, terms and the acknowledgement text
• NASA FIRMS. The 24 hour global VIIRS fire files
• GeoNames. The place list used for the nearest place (cities15000, CC BY 4.0)