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SS · South Sudan · –

Panyijiar fire, 9 November 2026 Rumbek Centre, Panyijiar, Rumbek East

Burning · last detection 14 Nov 2026, 11:46 UTC

The fire started on 9 November 2026 in Panyijiar, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,076 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 61 in South Sudan in 2026, of 246.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 14 Nov 2026, 11:46 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
10,076ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
9 Nov 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
3
counties
Started on
9 Nov
2026
Heat detections
267
in a single hotspot: 219 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
920MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Nov14 Nov
14 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

9 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 10 Nov 2026 · 1,846 MW · 117 11 Nov 2026 · 2,449 MW · 108 12 Nov 2026 · 131 MW · 15 13 Nov 2026 · 120 MW · 20 14 Nov 2026 · 52 MW · 7
9 Nov 11 Nov 13 Nov

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

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (15 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

38°high
33km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,080 ha in 2016, 2,266 ha in 2017, 1,032 ha in 2018, 392 ha in 2020, 459 ha in 2021, 1,949 ha in 2022, 3,160 ha in 2023, 448 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,226 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (101 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. 5,140 ha reached on 10 Nov
    1.3 %
  2. Panyijiar where it started
    4,815 ha reached on 9 Nov
    0.9 %
  3. 184 ha reached on 10 Nov
    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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
9 Nov 37.3 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Nov 37.5 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
11 Nov 36.9 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Nov 34.9 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Nov 36.7 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Nov 36.0 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Nov 2026
After · 13 Nov 2026

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 11 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak63 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1074 µg/m³
Optical depth0.84
6 Nov8 Nov10 Nov
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 · 267Every 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 Panyijiar fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 November 2026 to 14 November 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 November 2026 to 13 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,076 hectares (100.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Rumbek Centre (5,140 ha, 1.3 %); Panyijiar (4,815 ha, 0.9 %); Rumbek East (184 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Panyijiar fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 14 Nov 2026, 11:46 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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 · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 12 November 2026.
  1. Mapped perimeter arrives: from ≈ 5,502 ha estimated from hotspots to 10,076 ha.
  2. Start date: 8 November 2026 → 9 November 2026.
  3. Name: Rumbek Centre → Panyijiar.
  4. Area: ≈ 5,292 → ≈ 5,502 ha.
  5. Page published (≈ 5,292 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 10 November 2026 to 13 November 2026. 267 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.