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SS · South Sudan · –

Mayom fire, November 2026 Mayom, Rubkona

Burning · last detection 10 Nov 2026, 11:19 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 1 November 2026 in Mayom, South Sudan. It has been active for 10 days, with 418 heat detections and an area with fire of about 5,138 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 2 municipalities.

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.

GWIS (Copernicus) has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. It rebuilds it from hotspots, which can take several days, and it does not always arrive. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). If the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 10 Nov 2026, 11:19 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Wind, humidity and rain for the next 72 h

Area with fire
≈ 5,138ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
10days
1 Nov 2026 – 10 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
1 Nov
2026
Heat detections
418
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
283MW
detected power per day, on average

The next 72 hours

The wind is blowing from the north and pushing southwards; no sharp shifts are expected until Fri 13, 20:00.

ECMWF IFS 0.25° at the centre of the fire · computed 10 Nov 2026, 18:58 UTC

Tue 10, 21:00 – Wed 11, 07:00, local time

No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 18 %

Nights usually moisten the vegetation and the fire calms down. Tonight humidity does not reach 55 %, so it may stay active in the small hours.

Wed 11, 20:00 – Thu 12, 07:00, local time

No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 18 %

Nights usually moisten the vegetation and the fire calms down. Tonight humidity does not reach 55 %, so it may stay active in the small hours.

Thu 12, 20:00 – Fri 13, 07:00, local time

No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 26 %

Nights usually moisten the vegetation and the fire calms down. Tonight humidity does not reach 55 %, so it may stay active in the small hours.

Checked, no warning: no wind shifts of more than 60° no useful rain expected (0.0 mm in 72 h)

Hour by hour, local time

Tap the strip to see each hour

Mean wind Gusts where it blows to Relative humidity Night (8 pm to 8 am) Rain (mm) · chance in %

Where is it blowing? The next 48 h

geoBoundaries/South Sudan Information Management Working Group (IMWG), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and OCHA, OCHA South Sudan (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)); geoBoundaries/OCHA ROSEA, Information Management Working Group (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO))

At this hour

Places the fan reaches

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    This is not an official warning. It is a global model forecast with cells of about 25 km, at the centre of the fire: it cannot see valley winds or the winds the fire itself creates. The fan shows where the wind blows, not where the fire will spread. If in doubt, follow what the authorities say.

    Forecast: ECMWF IFS 0.25° (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), served by our own Open-Meteo instance; the chance of rain comes from the ECMWF ensemble. Variables: wind and gusts at 10 m, wind at 850 hPa, relative humidity and temperature at 2 m, rain. Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).

    Fire: VIIRS (NASA FIRMS); hotspots from the last 24 h: VIIRS from NASA FIRMS. Boundaries: geoBoundaries/South Sudan Information Management Working Group (IMWG), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and OCHA, OCHA South Sudan (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)); geoBoundaries/OCHA ROSEA, Information Management Working Group (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)).

    How it is worked out: wind shift = a change of more than 60° in 6 h or less, with at least 15 km/h before and after; no overnight recovery = peak humidity between 8 pm and 8 am stays below 55 %; useful rain = 2 mm or more in 6 h. The fan opens 18° plus however much the wind varies within ±3 h and reaches 25 km beyond the edge of the fire: one model cell, not a rate of spread. Methodology

    Where it burned

    HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Nov10 Nov
    10 Nov 2026

    How it evolved, day by day

    1 Nov 2026 · 74 MW · 12 2 Nov 2026 · 274 MW · 33 3 Nov 2026 · 358 MW · 53 4 Nov 2026 · 458 MW · 64 5 Nov 2026 · 355 MW · 50 6 Nov 2026 · 210 MW · 55 7 Nov 2026 · 69 MW · 6 8 Nov 2026 · 162 MW · 21 9 Nov 2026 · 283 MW · 50 10 Nov 2026 · 589 MW · 85
    1 Nov 3 Nov 5 Nov 7 Nov 10 Nov

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

    The weather it burned in

    42°high
    34km/h · peak gust
    10%lowest humidity

    It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

    What happened to each town

    1. Mayom where it started
      2,870 ha reached on 1 Nov
      0.7 %
    2. 2,268 ha reached on 1 Nov
      0.6 %

    Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

    Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
    1 Nov 39.2 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47
    2 Nov 40.0 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
    3 Nov 41.6 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
    4 Nov 41.0 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
    5 Nov 40.9 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
    6 Nov 41.4 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
    7 Nov 39.7 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
    8 Nov 37.8 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
    9 Nov 38.1 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
    10 Nov 37.5 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65

    Before and after, from space

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

    Before · 25 Oct 2026
    After · 9 Nov 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.

    Detections table · 418Every 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 Mayom fire last?
    According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 1 November 2026 to 10 November 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
    How much area did it burn?
    There is no perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 5,138 hectares with fire (51.4 km²), a rough figure; GWIS will give its own when it publishes the perimeter, which can take several days.
    Which municipalities burned?
    The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mayom (2,870 ha, 0.7 %); Rubkona (2,268 ha, 0.6 %).
    Is the Mayom fire still active?
    Yes: satellites detected fire on 10 Nov 2026, 11:19 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
    What was the weather like?
    During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class Extreme.
    What weather is expected at the fire over the next 72 hours?
    The wind is blowing from the north and pushing southwards; no sharp shifts are expected until Fri 13, 20:00. No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 18 % (Tue 10, 21:00 – Wed 11, 07:00). No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 18 % (Wed 11, 20:00 – Thu 12, 07:00). No overnight recovery: humidity stays at or below 26 % (Thu 12, 20:00 – Fri 13, 07:00). Times are local time at the fire. ECMWF IFS forecast (Open-Meteo) computed 10 Nov 2026, 18:58 UTC; this is not an official warning.
    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

    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
    • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 5,138 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
    • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 418 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
    • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

    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.