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Nyirol fire, February 2023 Nyirol, Canal/Pigi

Out · last detection 18 Feb 2023, 11:08 UTC

The fire started on 2 February 2023 in Nyirol, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,705 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 47th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 428 with a page). Number 13 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyirol · 2021Nyirol · 2022Nyirol · 2016Nyirol · 2022

Burnt area
15,705ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
2 Feb 2023 – 18 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
2 Feb
2023
Heat detections
603
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
70
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
379MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Feb18 Feb
18 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Feb 2023 · 544 MW · 65 3 Feb 2023 · 639 MW · 84 4 Feb 2023 · 595 MW · 58 5 Feb 2023 · 442 MW · 58 6 Feb 2023 · 1,666 MW · 85 7 Feb 2023 · 921 MW · 103 8 Feb 2023 · 408 MW · 52 9 Feb 2023 · 141 MW · 26 10 Feb 2023 · 71 MW · 9 11 Feb 2023 · 83 MW · 14 12 Feb 2023 · 10 MW · 1 14 Feb 2023 · 16 MW · 1 15 Feb 2023 · 403 MW · 34 16 Feb 2023 · 77 MW · 9 17 Feb 2023 · 3 MW · 2 18 Feb 2023 · 50 MW · 2
2 Feb 5 Feb 6 Feb 8 Feb 11 Feb 15 Feb 18 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
53km/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

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,232 ha in 2016, 1,933 ha in 2017, 4,547 ha in 2018, 3,011 ha in 2019, 1,679 ha in 2020, 9,752 ha in 2021, 7,977 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,992 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.9% of the area of London (157 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
    15,373 ha reached on 2 Feb
    2.2 %
  2. Canal/Pigi
    438 ha reached on 10 Feb
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
2 Feb 37.8 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
3 Feb 36.5 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
4 Feb 37.6 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
5 Feb 38.6 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
6 Feb 39.7 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
7 Feb 38.6 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
8 Feb 36.0 °C 11 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
9 Feb 37.7 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
10 Feb 38.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Feb 39.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
12 Feb 39.9 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
13 Feb 38.4 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
14 Feb 38.4 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
15 Feb 36.8 °C 13 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
16 Feb 34.7 °C 13 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
17 Feb 36.2 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
18 Feb 37.4 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
19 Feb after 38.0 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
20 Feb after 38.9 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
21 Feb after 39.3 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
22 Feb after 40.2 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Feb after 40.5 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
24 Feb after 40.1 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
25 Feb after 41.0 °C 9 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
26 Feb after 41.2 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
27 Feb after 41.8 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
28 Feb after 38.2 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jan 2023
After · 25 Feb 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak83 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10124 µg/m³
Optical depth0.92
311234567891011121314
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 603Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 February 2023 to 18 February 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 February 2023 to 11 February 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,705 hectares (157.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nyirol (15,373 ha, 2.2 %); Canal/Pigi (438 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 11 February 2023 → 18 February 2023.

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 2 February 2023 to 11 February 2023. 603 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 2025, 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.