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Cueibet fire, December 2025 Cueibet

Out · last detection 17 Dec 2025, 11:42 UTC

The fire started on 12 December 2025 in Cueibet, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,324 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 109th largest in Lakes since 2016 (of 158 with a page). Number 202 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cueibet · 2016Tonj South · 2017Tonj South · 2025Tonj South · 2021

Burnt area
6,324ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
12 Dec 2025 – 17 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
12 Dec
2025
Heat detections
103
in a single hotspot: 187 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
335MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Dec17 Dec
17 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

12 Dec 2025 · 100 MW · 15 13 Dec 2025 · 3 MW · 1 14 Dec 2025 · 96 MW · 9 15 Dec 2025 · 598 MW · 42 17 Dec 2025 · 878 MW · 29
12 Dec 13 Dec 14 Dec 15 Dec 17 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

33°high
34km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,708 ha in 2016, 1,385 ha in 2017, 1,908 ha in 2018, 2,004 ha in 2019, 1,618 ha in 2020, 3,747 ha in 2021, 504 ha in 2022, 2,780 ha in 2023, 692 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,763 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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. Cueibet where it started
    6,368 ha reached on 11 Dec
    1.3 %

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)
12 Dec 33.0 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Dec 32.7 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Dec 33.0 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Dec 32.9 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Dec 31.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Dec 31.9 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Dec after 31.4 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Dec after 32.1 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Dec after 33.1 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Dec after 34.0 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Dec after 33.0 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Dec after 34.8 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Dec after 35.1 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Dec after 35.5 °C 19 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Dec after 35.4 °C 21 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Dec after 35.6 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Dec 2025
After · 24 Dec 2025

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 18 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 87 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak87 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM1099 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
1011121314151617181920
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 · 103Every 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 Cueibet fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 December 2025 and 17 December 2025: 6 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 6,324 hectares (63.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cueibet (6,368 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class 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

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. 103 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.