Aweil Centre fire, 21 November 2017 Aweil Centre, Raga
The fire started on 21 November 2017 in Aweil Centre, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 42,442 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Northern Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 3 in South Sudan in 2017, of 203.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 42,442ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 21 Nov 2017 – 8 Dec 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 21 Nov
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 1,645
- in a single hotspot: 199 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 650MW
- 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 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22,029 ha in 2016.
- 9,421 ha Aweil Centre fire, November 2016 33,836 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,778 ha Aweil Centre fire, November 2016 7,107 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 272 ha Raga fire, December 2016 62,637 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Aweil Centre where it started33,898 ha reached on 19 Nov3.0 %
-
8,802 ha reached on 27 Nov0.1 %
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 2015Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Nov | 35.6 °C | 31 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 20 Nov | 35.9 °C | 23 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 21 Nov | 36.3 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Nov | 35.0 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 23 Nov | 34.1 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 24 Nov | 33.6 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Nov | 34.4 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 26 Nov | 35.4 °C | 12 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Nov | 34.6 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Nov | 35.5 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 29 Nov | 35.8 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 30 Nov | 36.5 °C | 18 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Dec | 35.7 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Dec | 35.3 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 3 Dec | 36.4 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 4 Dec | 36.9 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 5 Dec | 37.5 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 6 Dec | 37.3 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 7 Dec | 36.3 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 8 Dec | 35.2 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 9 Dec after | 36.0 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 10 Dec after | 37.0 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 11 Dec after | 37.8 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 12 Dec after | 38.0 °C | 12 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 13 Dec after | 37.4 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 14 Dec after | 36.9 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 15 Dec after | 35.8 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 16 Dec after | 35.7 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 17 Dec after | 35.8 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 18 Dec after | 36.8 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 Dec after | 37.5 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Dec after | 38.0 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 21 Dec after | 39.0 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 22 Dec after | 38.2 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 23 Dec after | 39.0 °C | 9 % | 38 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.
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 · 1,645Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 33,836 haAweil Centre25 November 2016 · 18 days · 13 km away
- 36,949 haAweil Centre4 December 2021 · 11 days · 21 km away
- 41,974 haAweil Centre6 December 2024 · 21 days · 22 km away
- 58,291 haRaga1 December 2019 · 18 days · 25 km away
- 179,432 haAweil Centre7 November 2025 · 45 days · 35 km away
- 21,779 haRaga11 January 2016 · 20 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Aweil Centre fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 November 2017 and 8 December 2017: 18 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 42,442 hectares (424.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aweil Centre (33,898 ha, 3.0 %); Raga (8,802 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,645 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.
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.