How long did the Raga fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 October 2016 and 3 November 2016: 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 6,490 hectares (64.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Raga (6,547 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.

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 · 2016-10-29 → 2016-11-03

Raga fire, 29 October 2016 Raga

Out · last detection 3 Nov 2016, 23:30 UTC

The fire started on 29 October 2016 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,490 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 288th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 158 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2025 Aweil West · 2025 Raga · 2025 Raga · 2017

Burnt area: 6,490ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 29 Oct 2016 – 3 Nov 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 29 Oct; 2016
Heat detections: 173; in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 126MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Oct3 Nov

Play back 3 Nov 2016

How it evolved, day by day

29 Oct 30 Oct 31 Oct 1 Nov 2 Nov 3 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

37km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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

Raga where it started

6,547 ha reached on 29 Oct

0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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	Danger (FWI)
29 Oct	36.0 °C	28 %	30 km/h	High 22
30 Oct	36.1 °C	24 %	26 km/h	High 22
31 Oct	36.6 °C	26 %	26 km/h	High 23
1 Nov	37.0 °C	23 %	27 km/h	High 24
2 Nov	37.3 °C	18 %	37 km/h	High 33
3 Nov	37.2 °C	18 %	31 km/h	High 30
4 Nov after	36.5 °C	18 %	33 km/h	High 33
5 Nov after	36.3 °C	17 %	36 km/h	High 35
6 Nov after	36.6 °C	17 %	34 km/h	High 34
7 Nov after	37.0 °C	15 %	35 km/h	High 37
8 Nov after	37.0 °C	14 %	36 km/h	Very high 38
9 Nov after	36.9 °C	13 %	30 km/h	High 37
10 Nov after	37.1 °C	15 %	28 km/h	High 37
11 Nov after	38.4 °C	13 %	38 km/h	Very high 44
12 Nov after	37.9 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Very high 39
13 Nov after	37.6 °C	17 %	25 km/h	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Oct 2016

After · 10 Nov 2016

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 · 173Every 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 Raga fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 October 2016 and 3 November 2016: 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 6,490 hectares (64.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Raga (6,547 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
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 ↗

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?

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What really happened?

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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. 173 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.

Where it burned