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Al Radoum fire, 14 December 2018 Al Radoum

Out · last detection 3 Jan 2019, 12:03 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2018 in Al Radoum, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,184 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in South Darfur since 2016 (of 343 with a page). The largest in Sudan in 2018, of 38.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Al Radoum · 2016Al Radoum · 2016Al Radoum · 2016Yalinga · 2025

Burnt area
10,184ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
14 Dec 2018 – 2 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
localities
Started on
14 Dec
2018
Heat detections
367
in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
80MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec2 Jan
3 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 2018 · 1 MW · 1 15 Dec 2018 · 3 MW · 1 17 Dec 2018 · 233 MW · 30 18 Dec 2018 · 19 MW · 2 19 Dec 2018 · 34 MW · 4 20 Dec 2018 · 78 MW · 14 21 Dec 2018 · 148 MW · 55 22 Dec 2018 · 280 MW · 37 23 Dec 2018 · 59 MW · 12 24 Dec 2018 · 62 MW · 23 25 Dec 2018 · 239 MW · 61 26 Dec 2018 · 158 MW · 60 27 Dec 2018 · 60 MW · 25 28 Dec 2018 · 78 MW · 19 29 Dec 2018 · 37 MW · 11 30 Dec 2018 · 5 MW · 4 1 Jan 2019 · 3 MW · 2 2 Jan 2019 · 7 MW · 5 3 Jan 2019 · 6 MW · 1
14 Dec 18 Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec 24 Dec 27 Dec 30 Dec 3 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
45km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,242 ha in 2016, 2,163 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,628 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (102 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 Radoum where it started
    7,022 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
14 Dec 31.0 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Dec 31.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Dec 32.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Dec 31.9 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Dec 29.8 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Dec 29.9 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Dec 29.1 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Dec 29.1 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Dec 28.5 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Dec 28.7 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Dec 29.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Dec 30.3 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Dec 31.5 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Dec 32.8 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Dec 31.9 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Dec 31.4 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Dec 30.1 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Dec 30.1 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Jan 32.1 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Jan 32.3 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Jan after 31.0 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Jan after 32.7 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Jan after 32.8 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Jan after 32.9 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan after 30.5 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Jan after 30.4 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Jan after 30.1 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Jan after 31.5 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Jan after 32.0 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jan after 34.0 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Dec 2018
After · 9 Jan 2019

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 · 367Every 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 Radoum fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 December 2018 to 2 January 2019 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 December 2018 to 30 December 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,184 hectares (101.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Al Radoum (7,022 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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: 30 December 2018 → 2 January 2019.
  2. Start date: 20 December 2018 → 14 December 2018.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 December 2018 to 30 December 2018. 367 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 2020, 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.