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Bor South fire, 24 December 2025 Bor South, Pibor

Out · last detection 9 Jan 2026, 11:11 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2025 in Bor South, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,767 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 245th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 427 with a page). Number 184 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Burnt area
6,767ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
24 Dec 2025 – 9 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
24 Dec
2025
Heat detections
130
in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Jan 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec9 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

242526272829301345679

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
38km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25 ha in 2016, 326 ha in 2017, 493 ha in 2020, 4,078 ha in 2021, 218 ha in 2022, 1,098 ha in 2023, 173 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,898 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Bor South where it started
    6,673 ha reached on 17 Dec
    0.5 %
  2. Pibor
    144 ha reached on 18 Dec
    0.0 %

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)
24 Dec 36.5 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Dec 36.5 °C 23 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Dec 36.3 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Dec 36.0 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Dec 35.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Dec 34.6 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Dec 33.4 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Dec 34.0 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Jan 35.3 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Jan 33.5 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Jan 36.0 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Jan 36.0 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Jan 36.0 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Jan 36.5 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Jan 36.7 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jan 37.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Jan 35.9 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Jan after 35.1 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jan after 35.4 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Jan after 36.5 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Jan after 36.7 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Jan after 35.1 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jan after 35.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Jan after 34.5 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Jan after 35.9 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Jan after 36.9 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Jan after 37.0 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Dec 2025
After · 16 Jan 2026

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 30 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 134 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak134 µg/m³
Days over the guideline22 days
PM10138 µg/m³
Optical depth1.61
22232425262728293031123456789101112
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 · 130Every 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 Bor South fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 December 2025 and 9 January 2026: 17 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 6,767 hectares (67.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bor South (6,673 ha, 0.5 %); Pibor (144 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 38 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

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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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.