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Baliet fire, November 2021 Baliet

Out · last detection 2 Dec 2021, 11:14 UTC

The fire started on 16 November 2021 in Baliet, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,802 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 79th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 60 in South Sudan in 2021, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Baliet · 2016Baliet · 2022Baliet · 2021Baliet · 2017

Burnt area
10,802ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
16 Nov 2021 – 2 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
16 Nov
2021
Heat detections
322
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
158MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Nov2 Dec
2 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

16 Nov 2021 · 274 MW · 28 17 Nov 2021 · 82 MW · 9 18 Nov 2021 · 1 MW · 2 19 Nov 2021 · 22 MW · 3 21 Nov 2021 · 219 MW · 25 22 Nov 2021 · 562 MW · 73 23 Nov 2021 · 505 MW · 80 24 Nov 2021 · 288 MW · 54 25 Nov 2021 · 127 MW · 23 26 Nov 2021 · 79 MW · 11 27 Nov 2021 · 25 MW · 9 28 Nov 2021 · 9 MW · 2 29 Nov 2021 · 1 MW · 2 2 Dec 2021 · 24 MW · 1
16 Nov 18 Nov 21 Nov 22 Nov 23 Nov 25 Nov 27 Nov 29 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

39°high
47km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 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: 7,352 ha in 2016, 1,798 ha in 2017, 693 ha in 2018, 2,258 ha in 2019, 3,721 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,613 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.8% of the area of London (108 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. Baliet where it started
    10,880 ha reached on 16 Nov
    0.9 %

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)
16 Nov 37.7 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Nov 39.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Nov 39.0 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Nov 39.0 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Nov 38.2 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Nov 36.9 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
22 Nov 36.8 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
23 Nov 36.9 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Nov 37.6 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Nov 37.4 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Nov 37.7 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
27 Nov 37.6 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Nov 38.9 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Nov 36.6 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Nov 37.8 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Dec 38.6 °C 16 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Dec 38.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Dec after 38.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Dec after 39.0 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Dec after 38.7 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Dec after 38.0 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
7 Dec after 38.5 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 Dec after 38.3 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
9 Dec after 37.9 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
10 Dec after 38.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Dec after 38.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
12 Dec after 38.8 °C 11 % 35 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.

Before · 9 Nov 2021
After · 9 Dec 2021

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 · 322Every 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 Baliet fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 November 2021 to 2 December 2021 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 November 2021 to 27 November 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,802 hectares (108.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Baliet (10,880 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 27 November 2021 → 2 December 2021.
  2. Start date: 21 November 2021 → 16 November 2021.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 November 2021 to 27 November 2021. 322 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.