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Nagero fire, 14 December 2016 Nagero

Out · last detection 1 Jan 2017, 23:24 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2016 in Nagero, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,034 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 168th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 359 with a page). Number 103 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

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Suggestions: Nagero · 2025Nagero · 2025Nagero · 2016

Burnt area
8,034ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
14 Dec 2016 – 1 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
14 Dec
2016
Heat detections
285
in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
151MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec1 Jan
1 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 2016 · 21 MW · 5 15 Dec 2016 · 47 MW · 5 16 Dec 2016 · 492 MW · 12 17 Dec 2016 · 40 MW · 13 18 Dec 2016 · 16 MW · 3 19 Dec 2016 · 64 MW · 8 21 Dec 2016 · 2 MW · 2 22 Dec 2016 · 57 MW · 10 23 Dec 2016 · 46 MW · 7 24 Dec 2016 · 99 MW · 10 25 Dec 2016 · 659 MW · 36 26 Dec 2016 · 85 MW · 29 27 Dec 2016 · 628 MW · 49 28 Dec 2016 · 71 MW · 19 29 Dec 2016 · 107 MW · 8 30 Dec 2016 · 109 MW · 22 31 Dec 2016 · 120 MW · 34 1 Jan 2017 · 48 MW · 13
14 Dec 17 Dec 21 Dec 24 Dec 25 Dec 27 Dec 30 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
44km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 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 5.1% of the area of London (80 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
    8,085 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.9 %

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)
14 Dec 35.4 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Dec 33.2 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Dec 34.3 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Dec 35.1 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Dec 35.0 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Dec 35.4 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec 35.6 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Dec 36.3 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Dec 36.4 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec 35.4 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Dec 36.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Dec 37.1 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Dec 35.8 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Dec 35.5 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Dec 35.4 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Dec 36.3 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Dec 36.7 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Dec 36.9 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan 37.1 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Jan after 36.7 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Jan after 36.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Jan after 36.5 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Jan after 35.7 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Jan after 37.2 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Jan after 37.9 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Jan after 38.0 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jan after 36.9 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Jan after 37.7 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Jan after 37.9 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Dec 2016
After · 8 Jan 2017

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 · 285Every 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 14 December 2016 to 1 January 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 December 2016 to 1 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,034 hectares (80.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nagero (8,085 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 21 December 2016 → 14 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 December 2016 to 1 January 2017. 285 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.