Baliet fire, 18 January 2022 Baliet, Panyikang
The fire started on 18 January 2022 in Baliet, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,811 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 44th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 28 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.
The power measured by the satellite is low (19.6 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…
- Burnt area
- 13,811ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 18 Jan 2022 – 31 Jan 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 18 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 472
- in a single hotspot: 20 MW
- Danger at start
- 54
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 131MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,464 ha in 2016, 8,190 ha in 2017, 8,760 ha in 2019, 1,372 ha in 2020, 9,674 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,318 ha that had burned before.
- 9,720 ha Panyikang fire, December 2019 37,962 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,189 ha Panyikang fire, December 2017 58,289 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,785 ha Panyikang fire, March 2021 12,977 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,451 ha Panyikang fire, November 2016 14,196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Baliet fire, December 2017 5,039 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Baliet where it started13,653 ha reached on 18 Jan1.2 %
-
232 ha reached on 23 Jan0.0 %
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 2020Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Jan | 33.2 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 19 Jan | 33.7 °C | 11 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 20 Jan | 32.7 °C | 11 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 21 Jan | 35.2 °C | 12 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 22 Jan | 35.3 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 23 Jan | 36.7 °C | 12 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 24 Jan | 37.4 °C | 12 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 25 Jan | 37.9 °C | 13 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 26 Jan | 37.7 °C | 14 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 27 Jan | 34.9 °C | 15 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 28 Jan | 34.3 °C | 16 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 29 Jan | 34.1 °C | 14 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 30 Jan | 34.9 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 31 Jan | 36.1 °C | 13 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 1 Feb after | 35.4 °C | 10 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 2 Feb after | 37.4 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 3 Feb after | 38.4 °C | 11 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 4 Feb after | 38.3 °C | 9 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 5 Feb after | 34.6 °C | 11 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 6 Feb after | 34.1 °C | 12 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 7 Feb after | 35.1 °C | 9 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 8 Feb after | 37.3 °C | 10 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 9 Feb after | 38.3 °C | 11 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 10 Feb after | 38.5 °C | 15 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 472Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Baliet fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 January 2022 and 31 January 2022: 14 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 13,811 hectares (138.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Baliet (13,653 ha, 1.2 %); Panyikang (232 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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
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.
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.
Report an error
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. 472 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.
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.