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SD · Sudan · –

Ad Dinder fire, 20 October 2026 Ad Dinder

Burning · last detection 5 Nov 2026, 10:17 UTC

The fire started on 20 October 2026 in Ad Dinder, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,081 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 294 in Sudan in 2026, of 313.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 5 Nov 2026, 10:17 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
2,081ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
20 Oct 2026 – 5 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
localities
Started on
20 Oct
2026
Heat detections
42
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
28MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Oct5 Nov
5 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

20 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1 22 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 23 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 24 Oct 2026 · 8 MW · 2 25 Oct 2026 · 4 MW · 1 26 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1 27 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 29 Oct 2026 · 21 MW · 4 30 Oct 2026 · 88 MW · 12 31 Oct 2026 · 18 MW · 5 1 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 2 Nov 2026 · 8 MW · 3 3 Nov 2026 · 39 MW · 4 4 Nov 2026 · 79 MW · 9 5 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0
20 Oct 24 Oct 30 Oct 3 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
30km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 207 ha in 2019, 101 ha in 2020, 554 ha in 2024, 387 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,094 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

  1. Ad Dinder where it started
    2,093 ha reached on 20 Oct
    0.2 %

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 40.6 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Oct 41.1 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Oct 41.7 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Oct 41.5 °C 13 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Oct 41.6 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
25 Oct 42.1 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Oct 41.3 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Oct 40.3 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Oct 38.6 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
29 Oct 41.2 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Oct 41.0 °C 15 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
31 Oct 41.0 °C 14 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Nov 41.3 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Nov 41.7 °C 11 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Nov 41.6 °C 8 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Nov 40.7 °C 8 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Nov 40.4 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Oct 2026
After · 4 Nov 2026

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 19 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1058 µg/m³
Optical depth0.39
18 Oct22 Oct26 Oct30 Oct3 Nov
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 · 42Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Sudan

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 5 November 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 October 2026 to 4 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,081 hectares (20.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ad Dinder (2,093 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Ad Dinder fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 5 Nov 2026, 10:17 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 5 November 2026.
  1. Page published (2,081 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

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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 26 October 2026 to 4 November 2026. 42 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.

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 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.