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Baliet fire, 11 December 2023 Baliet, Nyirol

Out · last detection 24 Dec 2023, 11:13 UTC

The fire started on 11 December 2023 in Baliet, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,188 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 71th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 23 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyirol · 2017Nyirol · 2018Nyirol · 2022Nyirol · 2020

Burnt area
11,188ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
11 Dec 2023 – 24 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
11 Dec
2023
Heat detections
475
in a single hotspot: 105 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
379MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Dec24 Dec
24 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

11 Dec 2023 · 18 MW · 5 12 Dec 2023 · 965 MW · 74 13 Dec 2023 · 891 MW · 118 14 Dec 2023 · 578 MW · 59 15 Dec 2023 · 514 MW · 31 16 Dec 2023 · 562 MW · 45 17 Dec 2023 · 297 MW · 36 18 Dec 2023 · 736 MW · 28 19 Dec 2023 · 334 MW · 17 20 Dec 2023 · 200 MW · 14 21 Dec 2023 · 16 MW · 4 22 Dec 2023 · 83 MW · 16 23 Dec 2023 · 79 MW · 8 24 Dec 2023 · 28 MW · 6
11 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 15 Dec 17 Dec 19 Dec 21 Dec 23 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
53km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,183 ha in 2016, 4,642 ha in 2017, 3,339 ha in 2018, 393 ha in 2019, 597 ha in 2020, 4,496 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,671 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (112 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
    6,401 ha reached on 8 Dec
    0.5 %
  2. Nyirol
    4,857 ha reached on 12 Dec
    0.7 %

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)
11 Dec 38.9 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Dec 39.3 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Dec 36.9 °C 9 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
14 Dec 36.6 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Dec 37.4 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Dec 37.7 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Dec 39.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Dec 38.4 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Dec 37.9 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Dec 38.9 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Dec 39.5 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Dec 40.2 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
23 Dec 39.0 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Dec 37.8 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Dec after 38.2 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
26 Dec after 37.6 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
27 Dec after 37.5 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Dec after 36.7 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
29 Dec after 37.1 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
30 Dec after 37.2 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
31 Dec after 37.1 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
1 Jan after 37.3 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Jan after 38.0 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
3 Jan after 37.5 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Dec 2023
After · 31 Dec 2023

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 15 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10104 µg/m³
Optical depth0.84
9101112131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 475Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 December 2023 and 24 December 2023: 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 11,188 hectares (111.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Baliet (6,401 ha, 0.5 %); Nyirol (4,857 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 475 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.