Skip to content
worldfires
SS · South Sudan · –

Panyikang fire, January 2025 Panyikang, Baliet, Canal/Pigi

Out · last detection 18 Feb 2025, 11:01 UTC

The fire started on 28 January 2025 in Panyikang, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,898 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 30th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 238 with a page). Number 11 in South Sudan in 2025, of 57.

Burnt area
14,898ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
28 Jan 2025 – 18 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit
4
counties
Started on
28 Jan
2025
Heat detections
719
in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start
67
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
227MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jan18 Feb
18 Feb 2025

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jan 2025 · 1,076 MW · 106 29 Jan 2025 · 242 MW · 59 30 Jan 2025 · 293 MW · 46 31 Jan 2025 · 187 MW · 33 1 Feb 2025 · 292 MW · 37 2 Feb 2025 · 300 MW · 47 3 Feb 2025 · 200 MW · 31 4 Feb 2025 · 114 MW · 13 5 Feb 2025 · 67 MW · 23 6 Feb 2025 · 113 MW · 16 7 Feb 2025 · 320 MW · 36 8 Feb 2025 · 475 MW · 74 9 Feb 2025 · 203 MW · 47 10 Feb 2025 · 194 MW · 66 11 Feb 2025 · 386 MW · 59 12 Feb 2025 · 32 MW · 18 13 Feb 2025 · 9 MW · 1 16 Feb 2025 · 2 MW · 1 17 Feb 2025 · 13 MW · 3 18 Feb 2025 · 26 MW · 3
28 Jan 1 Feb 5 Feb 9 Feb 13 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

41°high
46km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,449 ha in 2016, 11,744 ha in 2017, 470 ha in 2018, 9,285 ha in 2019, 1,299 ha in 2020, 7,688 ha in 2021, 6,202 ha in 2022, 12,435 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,662 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.4% of the area of London (149 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. Panyikang where it started
    13,037 ha reached on 28 Jan
    2.6 %
  2. 1,224 ha reached on 28 Jan
    0.1 %
  3. 614 ha reached on 28 Jan
    0.1 %
  4. 102 ha reached on 28 Jan
    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.

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)

Started with Very dry air: 33 % of the area in South Sudan 60 days without rain: 13 % of the area in South Sudan

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
28 Jan 36.8 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
29 Jan 36.0 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
30 Jan 36.3 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
31 Jan 36.9 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
1 Feb 37.8 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
2 Feb 38.9 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
3 Feb 39.7 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
4 Feb 39.8 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
5 Feb 39.2 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Feb 39.6 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
7 Feb 39.3 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
8 Feb 39.2 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
9 Feb 38.8 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
10 Feb 39.6 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
11 Feb 39.9 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
12 Feb 36.7 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 64
13 Feb 39.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 Feb 39.5 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
15 Feb 39.3 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Feb 39.9 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
17 Feb 40.6 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
18 Feb 39.8 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Feb after 41.1 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Feb after 40.8 °C 8 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
21 Feb after 41.3 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
22 Feb after 40.9 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
23 Feb after 40.4 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Feb after 40.3 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
25 Feb after 40.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
26 Feb after 40.0 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
27 Feb after 40.5 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Feb after 41.3 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 66.7, a minimum humidity of 11% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 26.

FWI at the start 66.7
Minimum humidity 11 %
Days without rain 60+
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Panyikang fire, February 2023
7,631 ha 11 days FWI 66.4 Min. humidity 11 % 4 km away, in 2023

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

12 days
median duration
7,256 ha
median area
27 %
went past 10,000 ha
1.1 mm
rain at the end (median; 5 of 26 had it)

It was 2.1 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 22 days, against 12 days.

Only 4 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 21 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.1 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
46km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 18 Feb, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 5 of 26, with a median of 1.1 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jan 2025
After · 25 Feb 2025

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 5 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak54 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10126 µg/m³
Optical depth0.93
26 Jan30 Jan3 Feb7 Feb11 Feb
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 · 719Every 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 Panyikang fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 January 2025 to 18 February 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 January 2025 to 11 February 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,898 hectares (149.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Panyikang (13,037 ha, 2.6 %); Baliet (1,224 ha, 0.1 %); Canal/Pigi (614 ha, 0.1 %); Nyirol (102 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 26. Their median duration was 12 days and their median area 7,256 ha; 27 % went past 10,000 ha. Only 4 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 21 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.1 mm.

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 2025 → 18 February 2025.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 28 January 2025 to 11 February 2025. 719 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.