How long did the Koch fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2024 and 28 March 2024: 8 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 7,426 hectares (74.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Koch (7,475 ha, 1.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2024-03-21 → 2024-03-28

Koch fire, 21 March 2024 Koch

Out · last detection 29 Mar 2024, 11:13 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2024 in Koch, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,426 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 31th largest in Unity since 2016 (of 85 with a page). Number 89 in South Sudan in 2024, of 180.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Koch · 2023 Koch · 2024 Koch · 2024 Koch · 2018

Burnt area: 7,426ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 21 Mar 2024 – 28 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 21 Mar; 2024
Heat detections: 306; in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start: 61; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 448MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar28 Mar

Play back 29 Mar 2024

How it evolved, day by day

21 Mar 23 Mar 25 Mar 27 Mar 29 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

43°high

43km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 2 Apr.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 814 ha in 2016, 483 ha in 2017, 2,577 ha in 2018, 62 ha in 2019, 2,976 ha in 2020, 165 ha in 2021, 4,104 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,817 ha that had burned before.

3,491 ha Koch fire, May 2023 5,967 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (74 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

Koch where it started

7,475 ha reached on 14 Mar

1.7 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
21 Mar	41.4 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
22 Mar	42.3 °C	9 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
23 Mar	41.5 °C	5 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
24 Mar	42.7 °C	6 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
25 Mar	41.7 °C	5 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
26 Mar	41.6 °C	6 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
27 Mar	41.8 °C	6 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
28 Mar	41.3 °C	13 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
29 Mar after	42.6 °C	13 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
30 Mar after	41.9 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
31 Mar after	41.0 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
1 Apr after	38.1 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 51
2 Apr after	38.3 °C	25 %	40 km/h	1.2 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Mar 2024

After · 4 Apr 2024

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 28 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 65: 4.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak108 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM10201 µg/m³

Optical depth1.32

WHO 15

19202122232425262728293031

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 · 306Every 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 Koch fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2024 and 28 March 2024: 8 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 7,426 hectares (74.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Koch (7,475 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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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. 306 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