Ad Dinder fire, 20 October 2026 Ad Dinder
The fire started on 20 October 2026 in Ad Dinder, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,186 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 44th largest in Sennar since 2016 (of 137 with a page). Number 130 in Sudan in 2026, of 294.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 2 Nov 2026, 11:53 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 3,186ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 20 Oct 2026 – 2 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- localities
- Started on
- 20 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 47
- in a single hotspot: 40 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 49MW
- 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 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6 ha in 2017, 926 ha in 2018, 510 ha in 2019, 755 ha in 2022, 6 ha in 2024, 1,249 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,900 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Ad Dinder where it started3,203 ha reached on 20 Oct0.2 %
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct | 40.9 °C | 17 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 21 Oct | 41.3 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 22 Oct | 41.4 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 23 Oct | 41.7 °C | 14 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 24 Oct | 41.6 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Oct | 42.3 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 26 Oct | 41.7 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 27 Oct | 40.8 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 28 Oct | 38.1 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 29 Oct | 41.5 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 30 Oct | 41.0 °C | 16 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 31 Oct | 41.1 °C | 14 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 1 Nov | 41.3 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 2 Nov | 42.0 °C | 12 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 18 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 47Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,311 haAd Dinder 19 October 2026 · 15 days · 16 km away
- 21,563 haAd Dinder1 November 2025 · 46 days · 18 km away
- 14,704 haAd Dinder14 November 2021 · 14 days · 30 km away
- 11,314 haAd Dinder11 November 2024 · 11 days · 31 km away
- 9,507 haAd Dinder8 November 2020 · 14 days · 35 km away
- 8,904 haAd Dinder10 January 2022 · 6 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ad Dinder fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 October 2026 to 2 November 2026 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 October 2026 to 1 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,186 hectares (31.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ad Dinder (3,203 ha, 0.2 %).
- Is the Ad Dinder fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 2 Nov 2026, 11:53 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 42.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sudan (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.
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 29 October 2026.
- Area: 2,975 → 3,186 ha.
- Area: 2,560 → 2,975 ha.
- Area: 2,097 → 2,560 ha.
- Page published (2,097 ha).
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 October 2026 to 1 November 2026. 47 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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 ADM2 (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.