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Ango fire, 19 December 2018 Ango

Out · last detection 28 Dec 2018, 23:12 UTC

The fire started on 19 December 2018 in Ango, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,129 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in Lower Uele since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 10 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ango · 2017Ango · 2019Ango · 2018Ango · 2018

Burnt area
19,129ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
19 Dec 2018 – 27 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
19 Dec
2018
Heat detections
491
in a single hotspot: 155 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
700MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Dec27 Dec
28 Dec 2018

How it evolved, day by day

19 Dec 2018 · 352 MW · 11 20 Dec 2018 · 331 MW · 19 21 Dec 2018 · 5 MW · 4 22 Dec 2018 · 2,786 MW · 98 23 Dec 2018 · 442 MW · 65 24 Dec 2018 · 601 MW · 66 25 Dec 2018 · 1,333 MW · 81 26 Dec 2018 · 907 MW · 84 27 Dec 2018 · 186 MW · 30 28 Dec 2018 · 54 MW · 15
19 Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec 23 Dec 25 Dec 27 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

35°high
37km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 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: 4,178 ha in 2016, 14,581 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,282 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (191 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. Ango where it started
    19,254 ha reached on 17 Dec
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
17 Dec 32.2 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
18 Dec 29.7 °C 52 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
19 Dec 33.2 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Dec 33.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
21 Dec 33.2 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
22 Dec 33.1 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
23 Dec 33.4 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
24 Dec 33.4 °C 24 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
25 Dec 34.2 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Dec 35.1 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Dec 34.4 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Dec after 30.6 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 14
29 Dec after 32.0 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Dec after 35.0 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Dec after 34.9 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Jan after 32.7 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
2 Jan after 33.3 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Jan after 34.3 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Jan after 35.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Jan after 34.2 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jan after 33.3 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 27
7 Jan after 32.2 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
8 Jan after 34.1 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Jan after 33.7 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Jan after 34.2 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Jan after 35.4 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Jan after 34.2 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jan after 34.1 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Dec 2018
After · 3 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 · 491Every 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ango fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 December 2018 and 27 December 2018: 9 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 19,129 hectares (191.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ango (19,254 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Democratic Republic of the Congo (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

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 491 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.

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.