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SD · Sudan · –

Geisan fire, 12 November 2026 Geisan, Al Kurmuk

Dying down · last detection 13 Nov 2026, 23:41 UTC

The fire started on 12 November 2026 in Geisan, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,119 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 325 in Sudan in 2026, of 357.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Is it still active?

No detections since 13 Nov 2026, 23:41 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
2,119ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
12 Nov 2026 – 13 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
localities
Started on
12 Nov
2026
Heat detections
37
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Average daily power
140MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Nov13 Nov
13 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

12 Nov 2026 · 249 MW · 33 13 Nov 2026 · 30 MW · 4
12 Nov 13 Nov

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

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,081 ha in 2016, 600 ha in 2017, 121 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,401 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Geisan where it started
    1,341 ha reached on 12 Nov
    0.4 %
  2. 791 ha reached on 12 Nov
    0.1 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Nov 2026
After · 13 Nov 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 13 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1067 µg/m³
Optical depth0.40
10111213
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 · 37Every 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 Sudan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Geisan fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 November 2026 and 13 November 2026: 2 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 2,119 hectares (21.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Geisan (1,341 ha, 0.4 %); Al Kurmuk (791 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Geisan fire still active?
No fire detections since 13 Nov 2026, 23:41 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
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

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. 37 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.

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.