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Ibba fire, 23 December 2025 Ibba, Yambio

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2026, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2025 in Ibba, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,512 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 84th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 359 with a page). Number 76 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ibba · 2016Ibba · 2016Yambio · 2026Ibba · 2025

Burnt area
14,512ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
23 Dec 2025 – 15 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
23 Dec
2025
Heat detections
443
in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
235MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec15 Jan
15 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Dec 2025 · 380 MW · 21 24 Dec 2025 · 9 MW · 2 25 Dec 2025 · 18 MW · 4 26 Dec 2025 · 34 MW · 6 27 Dec 2025 · 20 MW · 4 28 Dec 2025 · 5 MW · 1 30 Dec 2025 · 58 MW · 8 31 Dec 2025 · 13 MW · 2 1 Jan 2026 · 1,433 MW · 88 2 Jan 2026 · 991 MW · 98 4 Jan 2026 · 161 MW · 12 5 Jan 2026 · 482 MW · 21 6 Jan 2026 · 104 MW · 19 7 Jan 2026 · 273 MW · 28 8 Jan 2026 · 242 MW · 31 9 Jan 2026 · 90 MW · 17 10 Jan 2026 · 3 MW · 1 12 Jan 2026 · 103 MW · 16 13 Jan 2026 · 239 MW · 16 14 Jan 2026 · 108 MW · 19 15 Jan 2026 · 161 MW · 29
23 Dec 26 Dec 30 Dec 1 Jan 2 Jan 6 Jan 9 Jan 13 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
45km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,813 ha in 2016, 3,736 ha in 2017, 3,299 ha in 2018, 311 ha in 2019, 5,504 ha in 2020, 2,996 ha in 2021, 268 ha in 2022, 3,368 ha in 2023, 3,824 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,828 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.2% of the area of London (145 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. Ibba where it started
    14,364 ha reached on 23 Dec
    1.5 %
  2. Yambio
    242 ha reached on 23 Dec
    0.0 %

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 were about 0.02 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
23 Dec 32.9 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Dec 33.1 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Dec 33.2 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Dec 33.0 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Dec 33.9 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Dec 32.1 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Dec 29.8 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Dec 31.7 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Dec 32.3 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Jan 34.5 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Jan 33.8 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Jan 34.9 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Jan 35.4 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Jan 34.6 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Jan 35.3 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Jan 36.1 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Jan 36.5 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Jan 35.4 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Jan 33.7 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jan 34.1 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jan 35.3 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Jan 35.1 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Jan 34.7 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Jan 34.6 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Jan after 33.8 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Jan after 34.9 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Jan after 35.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jan after 35.4 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Jan after 36.1 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Jan after 34.4 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Jan after 36.2 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Jan after 35.7 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jan after 36.9 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Jan after 37.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Dec 2025
After · 22 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 2 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 159 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 81: 5.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak159 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10163 µg/m³
Optical depth1.10
282930311234567891011
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 · 443Every 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 Ibba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 December 2025 to 15 January 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 December 2025 to 8 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,512 hectares (145.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ibba (14,364 ha, 1.5 %); Yambio (242 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 January 2026 → 15 January 2026.
  2. Start date: 30 December 2025 → 23 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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 December 2025 to 8 January 2026. 443 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.