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SD · Sudan · –

Keilak fire, 28 November 2025 Keilak

Out · last detection 16 Dec 2025, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 28 November 2025 in Keilak, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,340 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 60 in Sudan in 2025, of 342.

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.

Compare with…
Burnt area
5,340ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
28 Nov 2025 – 18 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
localities
Started on
28 Nov
2025
Heat detections
114
in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
128MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Nov18 Dec
16 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

28 Nov 2025 · 5 MW · 1 29 Nov 2025 · 257 MW · 9 30 Nov 2025 · 192 MW · 15 1 Dec 2025 · 52 MW · 6 3 Dec 2025 · 304 MW · 14 4 Dec 2025 · 25 MW · 3 5 Dec 2025 · 132 MW · 12 6 Dec 2025 · 40 MW · 6 9 Dec 2025 · 70 MW · 4 10 Dec 2025 · 70 MW · 4 12 Dec 2025 · 117 MW · 7 13 Dec 2025 · 126 MW · 18 14 Dec 2025 · 13 MW · 6 16 Dec 2025 · 386 MW · 9
28 Nov 1 Dec 5 Dec 10 Dec 16 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
37km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,542 ha in 2016, 912 ha in 2019, 2,105 ha in 2021, 1,397 ha in 2022, 199 ha in 2023, 3,174 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,043 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 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. Keilak where it started
    5,431 ha reached on 28 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.

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)
28 Nov 36.4 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Nov 37.2 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Nov 37.6 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
1 Dec 37.0 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Dec 36.9 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Dec 36.4 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Dec 37.2 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Dec 37.4 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Dec 37.1 °C 16 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Dec 36.5 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Dec 37.7 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Dec 36.3 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Dec 35.1 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
11 Dec 34.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Dec 35.5 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
13 Dec 35.4 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Dec 35.4 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Dec 33.9 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Dec 32.7 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Dec 33.2 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Dec 33.1 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Dec after 34.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Dec after 34.3 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Dec after 34.6 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Dec after 34.9 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Dec after 35.8 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Dec after 36.5 °C 16 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Dec after 37.4 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Dec after 36.9 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Dec after 36.4 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Dec after 35.9 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Nov 2025
After · 25 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 15 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³
Days over the guideline21 days
PM10223 µg/m³
Optical depth0.60
26 Nov1 Dec6 Dec11 Dec16 Dec
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 · 114Every 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 Keilak fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 November 2025 to 18 December 2025 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 November 2025 to 13 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,340 hectares (53.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Keilak (5,431 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 13 December 2025 → 18 December 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 November 2025 to 13 December 2025. 114 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.