How long did the Mvolo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 December 2019 to 15 January 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 December 2019 to 8 January 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,973 hectares (199.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mvolo (17,696 ha, 3.1 %); Terekeka (2,410 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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 · 2019-12-23 → 2020-01-15

Mvolo fire, 23 December 2019 Mvolo, Terekeka

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2020, 10:52 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2019 in Mvolo, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,973 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 56th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 359 with a page). Number 24 in South Sudan in 2019, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mvolo · 2017 Mvolo · 2021 Terekeka · 2025

Burnt area: 19,973ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 23 Dec 2019 – 15 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 23 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 651; in a single hotspot: 203 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 413MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec15 Jan

Play back 15 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

23 Dec 30 Dec 2 Jan 5 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 14 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

37°high

44km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,864 ha in 2016, 4,756 ha in 2017.

4,225 ha Mvolo fire, December 2017 6,067 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (200 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

Mvolo where it started

17,696 ha reached on 23 Dec

3.1 %
Terekeka

2,410 ha reached on 5 Jan

0.2 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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	35.7 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Dec	34.8 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Dec	34.9 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
26 Dec	35.1 °C	16 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Dec	34.6 °C	14 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 Dec	34.3 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
29 Dec	35.5 °C	16 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Dec	36.2 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Dec	36.2 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
1 Jan	36.6 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
2 Jan	35.3 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Jan	35.2 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 43
4 Jan	35.3 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Jan	32.9 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Jan	34.6 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
7 Jan	35.7 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Jan	36.0 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
9 Jan	35.0 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
10 Jan	34.5 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
11 Jan	33.5 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
12 Jan	32.2 °C	10 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
13 Jan	33.8 °C	12 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Jan	36.1 °C	14 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
15 Jan	37.4 °C	16 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Jan after	37.4 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
17 Jan after	37.9 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
18 Jan after	36.8 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Jan after	35.0 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 Jan after	34.2 °C	17 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
21 Jan after	34.0 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
22 Jan after	33.9 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
23 Jan after	32.9 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
24 Jan after	33.4 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
25 Jan after	34.0 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Dec 2019

After · 22 Jan 2020

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.

Detections table · 651Every 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 Mvolo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 December 2019 to 15 January 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 December 2019 to 8 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,973 hectares (199.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mvolo (17,696 ha, 3.1 %); Terekeka (2,410 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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 ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 January 2020 → 15 January 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 29 December 2019 → 23 December 2019.

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.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 December 2019 to 8 January 2020. 651 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned