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Al Leri fire, 27 November 2017 Al Leri, Ghadeer

Out · last detection 8 Dec 2017, 23:29 UTC

The fire started on 27 November 2017 in Al Leri, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,485 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 17th largest in South Kordofan since 2016 (of 452 with a page). Number 4 in Sudan in 2017, of 137.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ghadeer · 2016Ghadeer · 2017Ghadeer · 2025Ghadeer · 2016

Burnt area
10,485ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
27 Nov 2017 – 10 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
2
localities
Started on
27 Nov
2017
Heat detections
307
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
332MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Nov10 Dec
8 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Nov 2017 · 54 MW · 4 30 Nov 2017 · 258 MW · 21 1 Dec 2017 · 844 MW · 56 2 Dec 2017 · 261 MW · 56 3 Dec 2017 · 506 MW · 62 4 Dec 2017 · 608 MW · 58 5 Dec 2017 · 158 MW · 18 6 Dec 2017 · 24 MW · 1 7 Dec 2017 · 598 MW · 24 8 Dec 2017 · 12 MW · 7
27 Nov 1 Dec 3 Dec 5 Dec 7 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
48km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,179 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,748 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (105 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. Al Leri where it started
    6,153 ha reached on 27 Nov
    0.8 %
  2. Ghadeer
    4,394 ha reached on 30 Nov
    0.7 %

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 2015
Built-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)
27 Nov 37.1 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
28 Nov 36.5 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Nov 37.7 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Nov 38.2 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
1 Dec 36.9 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Dec 37.3 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Dec 37.8 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
4 Dec 38.9 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Dec 39.1 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Dec 39.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Dec 37.9 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
8 Dec 37.2 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 Dec 38.1 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
10 Dec 38.7 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Dec after 39.7 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Dec after 39.3 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
13 Dec after 38.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 Dec after 38.2 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Dec after 37.9 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
16 Dec after 37.8 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
17 Dec after 37.8 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
18 Dec after 38.3 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
19 Dec after 38.8 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
20 Dec after 39.4 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Nov 2017
After · 17 Dec 2017

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 · 307Every 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 Al Leri fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 November 2017 to 10 December 2017 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 November 2017 to 5 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,485 hectares (104.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Al Leri (6,153 ha, 0.8 %); Ghadeer (4,394 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 5 December 2017 → 10 December 2017.
  2. Start date: 30 November 2017 → 27 November 2017.

RSS Changes to this page

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 November 2017 to 5 December 2017. 307 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.

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.