Burned area
satellite only2,189ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 20 Nov 2016 – 29 Nov 2016
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
SD · Sudan · –
Al Kurmuk fire, 20 November 2016 Al Kurmuk
Out · last detection 29 Nov 2016, 11:07 UTC
The fire started on 20 November 2016 in Al Kurmuk, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,189 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 52th largest in Blue Nile since 2016 (of 69 with a page). Number 136 in Sudan in 2016, of 169.
The power measured by the satellite is low (15.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-27matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only10days
20 Nov 2016 to 29 Nov 2016: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 29 Nov 2016, 11:07 UTC
+− cross-check
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.
Start
satellite only20 Nov 2016
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Nov 2016
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only36
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 15 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Nov 2016 – 29 Nov 2016
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only122MW
Total radiative power on 21 November 2016; hotspots that day: 21.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 21 Nov 2016
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model34.1FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 10.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Nov 2016, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model36.9°C · 15% RH
High of 36.9 °C and minimum humidity of 15% on 22 November 2016; gusts of 44 km/h on 23 November 2016.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Nov 2016 – 29 Nov 2016
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 24 November 2016 → 29 November 2016.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 27 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 2,189 ha
- Dates
- 20 Nov 2016 – 29 Nov 2016
- Name
- Al Kurmuk
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/al-kurmuk-2016-11-2?v=2026-10-27A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire al-kurmuk-2016-11-2.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-11-20 | 0 | 0 | 36.5 | 22.4 | 24 | 13.2 | 31.7 | 0 | 34.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-21 | 21 | 122 | 36.8 | 23.3 | 14 | 9 | 25.9 | 0 | 35.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-22 | 7 | 37 | 36.9 | 22.9 | 15 | 14 | 33.8 | 0 | 40.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-23 | 0 | 0 | 34.7 | 22.1 | 22 | 20.3 | 43.6 | 0 | 46.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-24 | 0 | 0 | 34.5 | 20.8 | 23 | 13.7 | 32.8 | 0 | 39.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-25 | 0 | 0 | 33.8 | 19.6 | 14 | 13.3 | 31 | 0 | 39.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-26 | 4 | 21 | 34.3 | 21 | 14 | 10.5 | 26.3 | 0 | 38.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-27 | 0 | 0 | 34.7 | 19.2 | 17 | 11.7 | 29.5 | 0 | 39.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-28 | 2 | 7 | 35.4 | 21.6 | 14 | 13.5 | 32.8 | 0 | 42.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-29 | 2 | 6 | 35.9 | 21.4 | 16 | 11.4 | 28.8 | 0 | 40.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2016-11-30 | 0 | 0 | 36.2 | 23.1 | 21 | 11.7 | 30.6 | 0 | 41.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2016-12-01 | 0 | 0 | 35.4 | 22.9 | 21 | 11.3 | 28.8 | 0 | 41.4 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2016-12-02 | 0 | 0 | 33.5 | 23.8 | 22 | 15.3 | 33.1 | 0 | 44 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2016-12-03 | 0 | 0 | 35.9 | 23.1 | 20 | 8.3 | 23.4 | 0 | 37.7 | alto | 0 |
| 2016-12-04 | 0 | 0 | 36.9 | 22.5 | 12 | 8.5 | 25.6 | 0 | 41.6 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2016-12-05 | 0 | 0 | 36.2 | 22.1 | 12 | 10.2 | 23 | 0 | 43.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2016-12-06 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 20.5 | 9 | 9.8 | 23 | 0 | 45.6 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2016-12-07 | 0 | 0 | 35.2 | 20.8 | 14 | 14.6 | 34.9 | 0 | 51.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2016-12-08 | 0 | 0 | 35.3 | 20.6 | 14 | 16.2 | 37.8 | 0 | 53.8 | extremo | 0 |
| 2016-12-09 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 20 | 17 | 15.3 | 36.7 | 0 | 51 | extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 2,189ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 20 Nov 2016 – 29 Nov 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- localities
- Started on
- 20 Nov
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 36
- in a single hotspot: 15 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 38MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Nov29 Nov
29 Nov 2016
How it evolved, day by day
21 Nov
22 Nov
26 Nov
28 Nov
29 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
37°high
44km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity
It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Al Kurmuk where it started2,205 ha reached on 21 Nov0.2 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Nov | 36.5 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 21 Nov | 36.8 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 22 Nov | 36.9 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Nov | 34.7 °C | 22 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 24 Nov | 34.5 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 25 Nov | 33.8 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 26 Nov | 34.3 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 27 Nov | 34.7 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 28 Nov | 35.4 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 29 Nov | 35.9 °C | 16 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Nov after | 36.2 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Dec after | 35.4 °C | 21 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 2 Dec after | 33.5 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 3 Dec after | 35.9 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 4 Dec after | 36.9 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Dec after | 36.2 °C | 12 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 Dec after | 36.1 °C | 9 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 7 Dec after | 35.2 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Dec after | 35.3 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Dec after | 35.0 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 34.1, a minimum humidity of 24% and 10 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 38.
FWI at the start
34.1
Minimum humidity
24 %
Days without rain
10
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Al Kurmuk fire, 20 November 2016
2,189 ha
10 days
FWI 34.1
Min. humidity 24 %
Sirba Abay fire, November 2017
2,871 ha
30 days
FWI 34.5
Min. humidity 24 %
88 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Quara fire, November 2023
4,014 ha
4 days
FWI 34.3
Min. humidity 24 %
211 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Guba fire, November 2023
2,197 ha
13 days
FWI 33.9
Min. humidity 22 %
142 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Maban fire, December 2023
14,320 ha
19 days
FWI 31.0
Min. humidity 24 %
127 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Al Kurmuk fire, November 2017
4,114 ha
15 days
FWI 34.3
Min. humidity 29 %
16 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 12 days
- median duration
- 3,364 ha
- median area
- 8 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 2.5 mm
- rain at the end (median; 3 of 38 had it)
It stayed below its twins: 2,189 ha against a median of 3,364 ha. It lasted 10 days, against 12 days.
In 35 of 38, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.5 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
44km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 29 Nov, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 3 of 38, with a median of 2.5 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Nov 2016
After · 6 Dec 2016
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 36Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Al Kurmuk fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 November 2016 to 29 November 2016 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 November 2016 to 24 November 2016.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,189 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Al Kurmuk (2,205 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
- 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 38. Their median duration was 12 days and their median area 3,364 ha; 8 % went past 10,000 ha. In 35 of 38, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.5 mm.
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 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 24 November 2016 → 29 November 2016.
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.
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 20 November 2016 to 24 November 2016. 36 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.