How long did the Nyirol fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2021 to 13 March 2021 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 February 2021 to 6 March 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,425 hectares (264.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nyirol (24,422 ha, 3.4 %); Akobo (2,173 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 81, class Very 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2021-02-17 → 2021-03-13

Nyirol fire, 17 February 2021 Nyirol, Akobo

Out · last detection 13 Mar 2021, 10:22 UTC

The fire started on 17 February 2021 in Nyirol, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,425 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 17th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 428 with a page). Number 10 in South Sudan in 2021, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyirol · 2020 Akobo · 2018 Nyirol · 2023 Nyirol · 2023

Burnt area: 26,425ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 17 Feb 2021 – 13 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 17 Feb; 2021
Heat detections: 946; in a single hotspot: 244 MW
Danger at start: 81; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 515MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Feb13 Mar

Play back 13 Mar 2021

How it evolved, day by day

17 Feb 20 Feb 23 Feb 24 Feb 26 Feb 2 Mar 5 Mar 9 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

42°high

51km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 20 Mar.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 538 ha in 2016, 3,265 ha in 2017, 7,186 ha in 2018, 635 ha in 2019, 8,528 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,689 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (264 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

Nyirol where it started

24,422 ha reached on 17 Feb

3.4 %
Akobo

2,173 ha reached on 18 Feb

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)
17 Feb	39.1 °C	9 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 81
18 Feb	35.4 °C	10 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 79
19 Feb	35.6 °C	10 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
20 Feb	36.2 °C	9 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
21 Feb	37.2 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
22 Feb	38.5 °C	9 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
23 Feb	37.0 °C	9 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
24 Feb	38.5 °C	9 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
25 Feb	38.1 °C	9 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
26 Feb	38.6 °C	11 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
27 Feb	38.1 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
28 Feb	40.5 °C	5 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
1 Mar	40.5 °C	7 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
2 Mar	39.8 °C	9 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
3 Mar	38.4 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
4 Mar	38.0 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
5 Mar	38.6 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
6 Mar	41.6 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
7 Mar	41.2 °C	11 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
8 Mar	41.2 °C	9 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
9 Mar	41.3 °C	8 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
10 Mar	41.5 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
11 Mar	41.4 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
12 Mar	41.3 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
13 Mar	41.1 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
14 Mar after	40.1 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
15 Mar after	39.6 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 62
16 Mar after	39.2 °C	24 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
17 Mar after	38.2 °C	26 %	52 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 62
18 Mar after	37.3 °C	29 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 53
19 Mar after	36.7 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
20 Mar after	39.7 °C	24 %	36 km/h	2.2 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Feb 2021

After · 20 Mar 2021

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 · 946Every 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 Nyirol fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2021 to 13 March 2021 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 February 2021 to 6 March 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,425 hectares (264.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nyirol (24,422 ha, 3.4 %); Akobo (2,173 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 81, class Very 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

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: 6 March 2021 → 13 March 2021.
26 October 2026 Start date: 21 February 2021 → 17 February 2021.

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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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 21 February 2021 to 6 March 2021. 946 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