How long did the Maridi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 December 2025 and 21 December 2025: 11 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 6,699 hectares (67.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Maridi (6,747 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 · 2025-12-11 → 2025-12-21

Maridi fire, 11 December 2025 Maridi

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2025, 11:48 UTC

The fire started on 11 December 2025 in Maridi, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,699 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 221th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 187 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Burnt area: 6,699ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 11 Dec 2025 – 21 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 11 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 126; in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Energy released: 2.0GW; sum of detected power

Play back 22 Dec 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Dec21 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

11121315161718192122

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

37km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,322 ha in 2016, 1,763 ha in 2017, 96 ha in 2018, 2,583 ha in 2020, 1,375 ha in 2021, 2,736 ha in 2022, 273 ha in 2023, 494 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,695 ha that had burned before.

421 ha Maridi fire, January 2020 13,665 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Maridi where it started

6,747 ha reached on 11 Dec

0.9 %

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)
11 Dec	34.0 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Dec	33.0 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Dec	31.8 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Dec	33.5 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Dec	30.9 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.7 mm	High 25
16 Dec	31.9 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Dec	33.2 °C	21 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Dec	32.2 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Dec	32.1 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
20 Dec	33.4 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Dec	33.7 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Dec after	33.5 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Dec after	34.3 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
24 Dec after	34.3 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Dec after	34.2 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
26 Dec after	34.5 °C	24 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
27 Dec after	34.6 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Dec after	33.1 °C	20 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Dec after	31.6 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
30 Dec after	32.7 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
31 Dec after	32.4 °C	17 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Dec 2025

After · 28 Dec 2025

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 106 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak106 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10109 µg/m³

Optical depth0.76

WHO 15

9101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 126Every 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 Maridi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 December 2025 and 21 December 2025: 11 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 6,699 hectares (67.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Maridi (6,747 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 ↗

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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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