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Nagero fire, 3 December 2016 Nagero, Wau

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2016, 12:15 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2016 in Nagero, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,113 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 109th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 359 with a page). Number 57 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nagero · 2023Wau · 2025Nagero · 2025

Burnt area
12,113ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
3 Dec 2016 – 22 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
3 Dec
2016
Heat detections
420
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
188MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec22 Dec
22 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2016 · 206 MW · 20 4 Dec 2016 · 37 MW · 9 5 Dec 2016 · 617 MW · 17 6 Dec 2016 · 4 MW · 4 7 Dec 2016 · 330 MW · 15 8 Dec 2016 · 151 MW · 16 9 Dec 2016 · 183 MW · 41 10 Dec 2016 · 121 MW · 24 11 Dec 2016 · 441 MW · 20 12 Dec 2016 · 222 MW · 32 13 Dec 2016 · 177 MW · 6 14 Dec 2016 · 131 MW · 26 15 Dec 2016 · 269 MW · 43 16 Dec 2016 · 221 MW · 44 17 Dec 2016 · 234 MW · 49 18 Dec 2016 · 176 MW · 36 19 Dec 2016 · 25 MW · 9 20 Dec 2016 · 33 MW · 8 22 Dec 2016 · 1 MW · 1
3 Dec 5 Dec 6 Dec 9 Dec 12 Dec 15 Dec 18 Dec 22 Dec

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
39km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 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 7.6% of the area of London (121 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
    12,005 ha reached on 3 Dec
    1.3 %
  2. Wau
    193 ha reached on 3 Dec
    0.0 %

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)
3 Dec 34.8 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
4 Dec 34.2 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Dec 36.2 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Dec 36.2 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Dec 35.7 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Dec 36.5 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Dec 36.3 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Dec 36.7 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Dec 36.5 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Dec 36.5 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Dec 36.2 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Dec 36.2 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Dec 34.4 °C 14 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Dec 35.1 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Dec 35.7 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Dec 35.7 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Dec 36.0 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Dec 36.3 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Dec 37.0 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Dec 37.0 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Dec after 36.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Dec after 36.6 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Dec after 37.6 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Dec after 36.2 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Dec after 35.8 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec after 35.8 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Dec after 36.9 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Dec after 37.3 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Dec after 37.4 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan after 37.7 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2016
After · 29 Dec 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 · 420Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 December 2016 to 22 December 2016 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 December 2016 to 19 December 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,113 hectares (121.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nagero (12,005 ha, 1.3 %); Wau (193 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 December 2016 → 22 December 2016.
  2. Start date: 4 December 2016 → 3 December 2016.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 December 2016 to 19 December 2016. 420 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.