Al Leri fire, 11 October 2026 Al Leri
The fire started on 11 October 2026 in Al Leri, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,166 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 19th largest in South Kordofan since 2016 (of 454 with a page). Number 17 in Sudan in 2026, of 284.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
No detections since 31 Oct 2026, 22:46 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. 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
- 9,166ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 21days
- 11 Oct 2026 – 31 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- localities
- Started on
- 11 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 160
- in a single hotspot: 57 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 86MW
- 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 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 49 ha in 2020, 567 ha in 2025.
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 Leri where it started9,224 ha reached on 14 Oct1.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Oct | 38.3 °C | 31 % | 54 km/h | 2.6 mm | High 26 |
| 12 Oct | 36.1 °C | 28 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Oct | 33.4 °C | 38 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 14 Oct | 37.0 °C | 32 % | 51 km/h | 1.3 mm | High 24 |
| 15 Oct | 37.4 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 16 Oct | 37.6 °C | 28 % | 47 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Oct | 37.2 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Oct | 37.0 °C | 32 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 33 |
| 19 Oct | 37.8 °C | 23 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 20 Oct | 39.4 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 38 |
| 21 Oct | 39.8 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 22 Oct | 40.4 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 Oct | 39.2 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 24 Oct | 39.4 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Oct | 39.3 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Oct | 38.0 °C | 17 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 27 Oct | 37.4 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 2.8 mm | High 31 |
| 28 Oct | 38.5 °C | 12 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 29 Oct | 40.2 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 30 Oct | 37.8 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 31 Oct | 39.6 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Nov after | 39.0 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 44 |
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 17 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 160Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Al Leri fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 October 2026 and 31 October 2026: 21 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,166 hectares (91.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Al Leri (9,224 ha, 1.2 %).
- Is the Al Leri fire still active?
- No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 22:46 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Area: 5,767 → 9,037 ha.
- Area: 3,097 → 5,767 ha.
- Area: 2,018 → 3,097 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 160 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.