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Aweil Centre fire, December 2025 Aweil Centre, Wau

Out · last detection 24 Dec 2025, 23:48 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2025 in Aweil Centre, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,910 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Northern Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 65 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Wau · 2017Wau · 2017Wau · 2017Wau · 2020

Burnt area
15,910ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
15 Dec 2025 – 25 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
15 Dec
2025
Heat detections
337
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
209MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec25 Dec
24 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

15 Dec 2025 · 294 MW · 21 16 Dec 2025 · 134 MW · 20 17 Dec 2025 · 86 MW · 20 18 Dec 2025 · 638 MW · 69 19 Dec 2025 · 223 MW · 85 20 Dec 2025 · 345 MW · 57 21 Dec 2025 · 125 MW · 31 22 Dec 2025 · 210 MW · 23 23 Dec 2025 · 8 MW · 4 24 Dec 2025 · 31 MW · 6
15 Dec 17 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 21 Dec 23 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

36°high
35km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,535 ha in 2016, 7,668 ha in 2017, 6,086 ha in 2019, 5,502 ha in 2020, 2,033 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,484 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (159 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. Aweil Centre where it started
    11,399 ha reached on 15 Dec
    1.0 %
  2. Wau
    4,612 ha reached on 15 Dec
    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)
15 Dec 32.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Dec 30.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Dec 31.2 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Dec 31.5 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Dec 32.2 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Dec 33.0 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Dec 33.6 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Dec 33.5 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Dec 32.6 °C 15 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Dec 34.8 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Dec 35.5 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Dec after 35.2 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Dec after 35.4 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Dec after 33.6 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Dec after 33.0 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Dec after 33.4 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Dec after 32.0 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Jan after 33.9 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Jan after 35.7 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Jan after 34.7 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Jan after 34.7 °C 14 % 34 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 · 8 Dec 2025
After · 1 Jan 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 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10139 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
13141516171819202122232425262728
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 · 337Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aweil Centre fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 December 2025 and 25 December 2025: 11 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 15,910 hectares (159.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aweil Centre (11,399 ha, 1.0 %); Wau (4,612 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very high.
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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 337 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.