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SD · Sudan · –

Al Radoum fire, 13 October 2026 Al Radoum

Out · last detection 27 Oct 2026, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2026 in Al Radoum, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,183 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 88 in Sudan in 2026, of 340.

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.

Burnt area
4,183ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
13 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
1
localities
Started on
13 Oct
2026
Heat detections
79
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
43MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct27 Oct
27 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 15 Oct 2026 · 149 MW · 21 16 Oct 2026 · 38 MW · 8 17 Oct 2026 · 17 MW · 4 18 Oct 2026 · 21 MW · 4 19 Oct 2026 · 86 MW · 14 20 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1 21 Oct 2026 · 3 MW · 1 22 Oct 2026 · 45 MW · 5 23 Oct 2026 · 11 MW · 1 24 Oct 2026 · 150 MW · 12 25 Oct 2026 · 9 MW · 2 26 Oct 2026 · 2 MW · 1 27 Oct 2026 · 20 MW · 5
13 Oct 17 Oct 20 Oct 24 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
42km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (42 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
    4,211 ha reached on 13 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
13 Oct 35.2 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Oct 36.0 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Oct 37.5 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Oct 36.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Oct 36.3 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Oct 35.4 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Oct 37.2 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Oct 37.5 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
21 Oct 37.9 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
22 Oct 38.0 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
23 Oct 37.3 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
24 Oct 37.1 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Oct 38.0 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Oct 36.4 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Oct 37.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
28 Oct after 35.9 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
29 Oct after 37.3 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
30 Oct after 37.9 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
31 Oct after 37.4 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
1 Nov after 37.5 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
2 Nov after 38.1 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
3 Nov after 38.5 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
4 Nov after 38.9 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
5 Nov after 38.6 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2026
After · 3 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 17 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10142 µg/m³
Optical depth0.62
11 Oct13 Oct15 Oct17 Oct
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 · 79Every 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 13 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 October 2026 to 20 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,183 hectares (41.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Al Radoum (4,211 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Al Radoum fire still active?
No fire detections since 27 Oct 2026, 12:23 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 27 October 2026.

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 13 October 2026 to 20 October 2026. 79 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 2025, 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.