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Ayod fire, February 2017 Ayod, Fangak

Out · last detection 16 Mar 2017, 11:00 UTC

The fire started on 25 February 2017 in Ayod, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,297 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 51th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 427 with a page). Number 31 in South Sudan in 2017, of 203.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ayod · 2016Fangak · 2019Fangak · 2017Fangak · 2019

Burnt area
15,297ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
25 Feb 2017 – 15 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
25 Feb
2017
Heat detections
1,070
in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start
70
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
461MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Feb15 Mar
16 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

25 Feb 2017 · 172 MW · 26 26 Feb 2017 · 248 MW · 26 27 Feb 2017 · 298 MW · 36 28 Feb 2017 · 115 MW · 17 1 Mar 2017 · 127 MW · 28 2 Mar 2017 · 823 MW · 64 3 Mar 2017 · 801 MW · 74 4 Mar 2017 · 1,234 MW · 110 5 Mar 2017 · 1,221 MW · 110 6 Mar 2017 · 147 MW · 32 7 Mar 2017 · 970 MW · 131 8 Mar 2017 · 174 MW · 36 9 Mar 2017 · 894 MW · 63 10 Mar 2017 · 87 MW · 16 11 Mar 2017 · 1,468 MW · 115 12 Mar 2017 · 57 MW · 14 13 Mar 2017 · 210 MW · 40 14 Mar 2017 · 45 MW · 7 15 Mar 2017 · 127 MW · 15 16 Mar 2017 · 6 MW · 1
25 Feb 28 Feb 3 Mar 6 Mar 9 Mar 11 Mar 12 Mar 15 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
52km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 17 Mar.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,462 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,982 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.7% of the area of London (153 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. Ayod where it started
    9,903 ha reached on 19 Feb
    0.7 %
  2. Fangak
    5,502 ha reached on 23 Feb
    0.7 %

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)
25 Feb 37.8 °C 6 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
26 Feb 38.6 °C 7 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
27 Feb 39.3 °C 7 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
28 Feb 39.5 °C 9 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
1 Mar 38.9 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Mar 41.3 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
3 Mar 40.4 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
4 Mar 41.0 °C 7 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
5 Mar 41.0 °C 6 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
6 Mar 41.8 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
7 Mar 42.1 °C 5 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
8 Mar 41.9 °C 5 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
9 Mar 42.1 °C 6 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
10 Mar 41.8 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
11 Mar 42.1 °C 6 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
12 Mar 42.3 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
13 Mar 42.3 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
14 Mar 42.7 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
15 Mar 41.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
16 Mar after 40.5 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
17 Mar after 36.6 °C 32 % 36 km/h 3.2 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Feb 2017
After · 22 Mar 2017

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 · 1,070Every 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 Ayod fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 February 2017 and 15 March 2017: 19 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 15,297 hectares (153.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ayod (9,903 ha, 0.7 %); Fangak (5,502 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, class Very 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

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. 1,070 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.