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SS · South Sudan · –

Aweil West fire, 7 November 2025 Aweil West

Out · last detection 30 Nov 2025, 22:56 UTC

The fire started on 7 November 2025 in Aweil West, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,197 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 67 in South Sudan in 2025, of 235.

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
14,197ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
7 Nov 2025 – 30 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
7 Nov
2025
Heat detections
352
in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
98MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Nov30 Nov
30 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

7 Nov 2025 · 90 MW · 9 8 Nov 2025 · 42 MW · 13 10 Nov 2025 · 17 MW · 5 11 Nov 2025 · 2 MW · 1 13 Nov 2025 · 5 MW · 6 14 Nov 2025 · 202 MW · 18 15 Nov 2025 · 166 MW · 35 16 Nov 2025 · 152 MW · 38 17 Nov 2025 · 76 MW · 27 18 Nov 2025 · 73 MW · 16 19 Nov 2025 · 108 MW · 19 20 Nov 2025 · 183 MW · 24 21 Nov 2025 · 285 MW · 58 22 Nov 2025 · 375 MW · 69 23 Nov 2025 · 15 MW · 4 24 Nov 2025 · 9 MW · 3 26 Nov 2025 · 34 MW · 1 29 Nov 2025 · 8 MW · 2 30 Nov 2025 · 15 MW · 4
7 Nov 13 Nov 17 Nov 22 Nov 26 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

36°high
36km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,530 ha in 2016, 7,070 ha in 2017, 1,572 ha in 2019, 3,889 ha in 2020, 4,410 ha in 2021, 3,675 ha in 2022, 89 ha in 2023, 3,770 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,610 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9% of the area of London (142 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 West where it started
    14,321 ha reached on 7 Nov
    2.8 %

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)
7 Nov 35.3 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Nov 35.7 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Nov 35.2 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Nov 35.2 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Nov 35.4 °C 20 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Nov 35.7 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Nov 35.7 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Nov 35.0 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Nov 32.9 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Nov 32.5 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Nov 33.4 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Nov 34.5 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Nov 35.4 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Nov 35.6 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Nov 35.3 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Nov 36.1 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Nov 35.7 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Nov 35.8 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Nov 35.5 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Nov 35.8 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Nov 35.7 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Nov 35.7 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Nov 35.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Nov 36.2 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Dec after 36.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Dec after 35.7 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Dec after 35.5 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Dec after 35.0 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Dec after 35.8 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Dec after 35.5 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Dec after 36.1 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Dec after 36.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Dec after 34.2 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Dec after 33.1 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Oct 2025
After · 7 Dec 2025

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 23 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 86 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak86 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM1097 µg/m³
Optical depth0.65
12 Nov16 Nov20 Nov24 Nov
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 · 352Every 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 West fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 November 2025 to 30 November 2025 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 November 2025 to 24 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,197 hectares (142.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aweil West (14,321 ha, 2.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 24 November 2025 → 30 November 2025.
  2. Start date: 14 November 2025 → 7 November 2025.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 November 2025 to 24 November 2025. 352 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.