How long did the Ibba fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 November 2025 to 26 December 2025 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 December 2025 to 20 December 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,576 hectares (145.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ibba (9,477 ha, 1.0 %); Yambio (5,187 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2025-11-27 → 2025-12-26

Ibba fire, 27 November 2025 Ibba, Yambio

Out · last detection 27 Dec 2025, 11:54 UTC

The fire started on 27 November 2025 in Ibba, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,576 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 83th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 75 in South Sudan in 2025, of 293.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ibba · 2025 Ibba · 2025 Ibba · 2016 Ibba · 2025

Burnt area: 14,576ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 30days; 27 Nov 2025 – 26 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 27 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 426; in a single hotspot: 161 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 167MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Nov26 Dec

Play back 27 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

27 Nov 2 Dec 8 Dec 14 Dec 18 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

35°high

40km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,067 ha in 2016, 1,293 ha in 2017, 1,135 ha in 2018, 1,497 ha in 2019, 2,372 ha in 2020, 932 ha in 2021, 4,874 ha in 2023, 1,402 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,799 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.2% of the area of London (146 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

Ibba where it started

9,477 ha reached on 27 Nov

1.0 %
Yambio

5,187 ha reached on 27 Nov

0.6 %

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.

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)
27 Nov	33.1 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Nov	33.6 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
29 Nov	33.4 °C	35 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
30 Nov	34.7 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 Dec	34.7 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Dec	35.3 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
3 Dec	33.4 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 Dec	34.5 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
5 Dec	32.7 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
6 Dec	33.8 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Dec	33.8 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
8 Dec	34.7 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
9 Dec	32.7 °C	37 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
10 Dec	30.2 °C	48 %	34 km/h	2.2 mm	Low 8
11 Dec	33.3 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Dec	32.2 °C	27 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
13 Dec	30.9 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Dec	33.1 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Dec	30.2 °C	43 %	40 km/h	2.6 mm	Low 10
16 Dec	31.6 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 Dec	32.0 °C	24 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
18 Dec	31.6 °C	22 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Dec	31.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Dec	32.5 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Dec	32.5 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Dec	31.2 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
23 Dec	32.4 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
24 Dec	32.7 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
25 Dec	32.8 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Dec	32.6 °C	29 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Dec after	33.1 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Dec after	31.6 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
29 Dec after	29.6 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 Dec after	31.0 °C	34 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
31 Dec after	32.0 °C	19 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Jan after	34.3 °C	20 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
2 Jan after	33.3 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 Jan after	35.0 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
4 Jan after	35.2 °C	19 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Jan after	34.3 °C	21 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Nov 2025

After · 2 Jan 2026

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 22 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 103 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak103 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM10107 µg/m³

Optical depth0.83

WHO 15

234567891011121314151617181920212223

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 · 426Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ibba fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 November 2025 to 26 December 2025 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 December 2025 to 20 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,576 hectares (145.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ibba (9,477 ha, 1.0 %); Yambio (5,187 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 20 December 2025 → 26 December 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 4 December 2025 → 27 November 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 4 December 2025 to 20 December 2025. 426 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.

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