How long did the Aweil North fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 November 2019 to 21 November 2019 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 November 2019 to 17 November 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,600 hectares (96.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aweil North (9,599 ha, 1.5 %); Raga (60 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2019-11-06 → 2019-11-21

Aweil North fire, November 2019 Aweil North, Raga

Out · last detection 20 Nov 2019, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 6 November 2019 in Aweil North, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,600 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 23th largest in Northern Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 61 in South Sudan in 2019, of 150.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.1 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: Aweil North · 2016 Aweil North · 2017 Aweil West · 2025 Aweil North · 2025

Burnt area: 9,600ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 6 Nov 2019 – 21 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 6 Nov; 2019
Heat detections: 443; in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 143MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Nov21 Nov

Play back 20 Nov 2019

How it evolved, day by day

6 Nov 10 Nov 12 Nov 13 Nov 14 Nov 16 Nov 19 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

37km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,367 ha in 2016, 4,744 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,541 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (96 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

Aweil North where it started

9,599 ha reached on 6 Nov

1.5 %
Raga

60 ha reached on 10 Nov

0.0 %

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)
6 Nov	35.4 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
7 Nov	34.9 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
8 Nov	35.7 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
9 Nov	35.2 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Nov	35.9 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Nov	36.4 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
12 Nov	36.0 °C	19 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Nov	36.4 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Nov	37.1 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Nov	37.2 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Nov	37.4 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Nov	37.2 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Nov	36.9 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Nov	36.4 °C	16 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Nov	36.5 °C	11 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Nov	35.8 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Nov after	35.8 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
23 Nov after	35.6 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
24 Nov after	35.4 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
25 Nov after	35.9 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
26 Nov after	36.1 °C	13 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
27 Nov after	36.1 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Nov after	37.4 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
29 Nov after	36.3 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
30 Nov after	35.6 °C	12 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Dec after	35.8 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Oct 2019

After · 28 Nov 2019

Before After

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 · 443Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aweil North fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 November 2019 to 21 November 2019 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 November 2019 to 17 November 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,600 hectares (96.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aweil North (9,599 ha, 1.5 %); Raga (60 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 17 November 2019 → 21 November 2019.
26 October 2026 Start date: 7 November 2019 → 6 November 2019.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 7 November 2019 to 17 November 2019. 443 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.

Where it burned