How long did the Buram fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 November 2025 to 15 December 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 November 2025 to 9 December 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,198 hectares (52.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Buram (5,229 ha, 1.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 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 Sudan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SD · Sudan · 2025-11-23 → 2025-12-15

Buram fire, 23 November 2025 Buram

Out · last detection 15 Dec 2025, 12:21 UTC

The fire started on 23 November 2025 in Buram, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,198 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 46th largest in South Darfur since 2016 (of 337 with a page). Number 69 in Sudan in 2025, of 390.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Buram · 2023 Buram · 2024 Buram · 2018 Buram · 2024

Burnt area: 5,198ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 23 Nov 2025 – 15 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; localities
Started on: 23 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 140; in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 72MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Nov15 Dec

Play back 15 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

24 Nov 27 Nov 2 Dec 7 Dec 12 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

38°high

44km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,151 ha in 2016, 1,278 ha in 2018, 1,621 ha in 2020, 1,019 ha in 2021, 829 ha in 2022, 3,240 ha in 2023, 1,801 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,479 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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

Buram where it started

5,229 ha reached on 24 Nov

1.4 %

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	Danger (FWI)
23 Nov	37.3 °C	12 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52
24 Nov	37.5 °C	13 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
25 Nov	36.5 °C	14 %	40 km/h	Extreme 60
26 Nov	36.0 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 62
27 Nov	36.0 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 58
28 Nov	35.3 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Extreme 55
29 Nov	36.0 °C	16 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
30 Nov	36.4 °C	18 %	44 km/h	Extreme 60
1 Dec	35.9 °C	18 %	44 km/h	Extreme 60
2 Dec	35.2 °C	17 %	40 km/h	Extreme 58
3 Dec	35.2 °C	17 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
4 Dec	36.0 °C	16 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
5 Dec	36.7 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Extreme 51
6 Dec	38.0 °C	13 %	31 km/h	Extreme 51
7 Dec	38.0 °C	14 %	26 km/h	Very high 47
8 Dec	36.1 °C	15 %	40 km/h	Extreme 61
9 Dec	33.8 °C	15 %	39 km/h	Extreme 60
10 Dec	32.8 °C	14 %	40 km/h	Extreme 60
11 Dec	33.0 °C	15 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
12 Dec	33.5 °C	16 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
13 Dec	33.1 °C	10 %	39 km/h	Extreme 59
14 Dec	32.0 °C	11 %	43 km/h	Extreme 61
15 Dec	30.5 °C	10 %	48 km/h	Extreme 65
16 Dec after	29.6 °C	14 %	46 km/h	Extreme 62
17 Dec after	30.0 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
18 Dec after	30.0 °C	13 %	40 km/h	Extreme 57
19 Dec after	30.8 °C	12 %	40 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Nov 2025

After · 22 Dec 2025

Before After

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 2 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM10197 µg/m³

Optical depth0.42

WHO 15

21222324252627282930123456789101112

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 · 140Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Buram fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 November 2025 to 15 December 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 November 2025 to 9 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,198 hectares (52.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Buram (5,229 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 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 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 December 2025 → 15 December 2025.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 November 2025 to 9 December 2025. 140 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.

Where it burned