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Nagero fire, 19 January 2016 Nagero

Out · last detection 10 Feb 2016, 23:38 UTC

The fire started on 19 January 2016 in Nagero, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,322 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 61th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 29 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nagero · 2019Wau · 2025Nagero · 2025Nagero · 2019

Burnt area
18,322ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
19 Jan 2016 – 9 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
19 Jan
2016
Heat detections
569
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
111MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jan9 Feb
10 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jan 2016 · 10 MW · 3 20 Jan 2016 · 83 MW · 31 21 Jan 2016 · 98 MW · 35 22 Jan 2016 · 298 MW · 45 23 Jan 2016 · 245 MW · 38 24 Jan 2016 · 69 MW · 49 25 Jan 2016 · 142 MW · 41 26 Jan 2016 · 30 MW · 14 27 Jan 2016 · 39 MW · 10 28 Jan 2016 · 97 MW · 16 29 Jan 2016 · 75 MW · 18 30 Jan 2016 · 87 MW · 39 31 Jan 2016 · 88 MW · 43 1 Feb 2016 · 162 MW · 51 2 Feb 2016 · 35 MW · 7 3 Feb 2016 · 60 MW · 9 4 Feb 2016 · 74 MW · 18 5 Feb 2016 · 78 MW · 21 6 Feb 2016 · 686 MW · 58 7 Feb 2016 · 53 MW · 6 8 Feb 2016 · 13 MW · 3 9 Feb 2016 · 16 MW · 5 10 Feb 2016 · 21 MW · 4
19 Jan 23 Jan 27 Jan 31 Jan 4 Feb 6 Feb 8 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
43km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (183 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. Nagero where it started
    18,448 ha reached on 19 Jan
    2.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
19 Jan 37.6 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Jan 36.5 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Jan 37.4 °C 7 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
22 Jan 38.7 °C 8 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Jan 37.7 °C 9 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Jan 37.1 °C 8 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
25 Jan 34.3 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Jan 33.5 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
27 Jan 32.0 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Jan 32.5 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
29 Jan 32.0 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
30 Jan 32.9 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
31 Jan 34.4 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Feb 35.9 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Feb 35.9 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
3 Feb 36.7 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
4 Feb 38.0 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Feb 39.6 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
6 Feb 39.1 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
7 Feb 37.6 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
8 Feb 37.4 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
9 Feb 37.3 °C 7 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
10 Feb after 37.6 °C 5 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Feb after 35.8 °C 6 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
12 Feb after 36.5 °C 6 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Feb after 38.1 °C 7 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Feb after 38.9 °C 7 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Feb after 40.0 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
16 Feb after 40.5 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Feb after 40.6 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
18 Feb after 40.2 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Feb after 41.1 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jan 2016
After · 16 Feb 2016

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 · 569Every 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 Nagero fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 January 2016 and 9 February 2016: 22 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 18,322 hectares (183.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nagero (18,448 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class 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

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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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. 569 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 2015, 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.