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Nyirol fire, 17 January 2017 Nyirol, Baliet

Out · last detection 22 Jan 2017, 23:30 UTC

The fire started on 17 January 2017 in Nyirol, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,853 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 69th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 427 with a page). Number 39 in South Sudan in 2017, of 203.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyirol · 2026Panyikang · 2019Nyirol · 2023Baliet · 2022

Burnt area
13,853ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
17 Jan 2017 – 22 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
17 Jan
2017
Heat detections
339
in a single hotspot: 122 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
848MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jan22 Jan
22 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jan 2017 · 455 MW · 51 18 Jan 2017 · 362 MW · 45 19 Jan 2017 · 1,728 MW · 107 20 Jan 2017 · 888 MW · 45 21 Jan 2017 · 1,011 MW · 65 22 Jan 2017 · 642 MW · 26
17 Jan 18 Jan 19 Jan 20 Jan 21 Jan 22 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

40°high
42km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 258 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (139 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. Nyirol where it started
    11,863 ha reached on 17 Jan
    1.7 %
  2. Baliet
    2,088 ha reached on 20 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.

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)
17 Jan 39.5 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Jan 40.2 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Jan 40.1 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Jan 39.6 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
21 Jan 40.0 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
22 Jan 40.1 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Jan after 40.2 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Jan after 40.2 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
25 Jan after 40.6 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
26 Jan after 39.4 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Jan after 39.9 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
28 Jan after 39.1 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
29 Jan after 38.1 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
30 Jan after 38.4 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
31 Jan after 38.9 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
1 Feb after 37.3 °C 8 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jan 2017
After · 29 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 · 339Every 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 Nyirol fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 January 2017 and 22 January 2017: 6 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 13,853 hectares (138.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nyirol (11,863 ha, 1.7 %); Baliet (2,088 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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. 339 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.

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.