Skip to content
worldfires
en
SS · South Sudan · →

Raga fire, 30 November 2016 Raga

Out · last detection 23 Dec 2016, 22:53 UTC

The fire started on 30 November 2016 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,598 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 72th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 31 in South Sudan in 2016, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aweil Centre · 2024Raga · 2019Aweil Centre · 2021Raga · 2016

Burnt area
17,598ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
30 Nov 2016 – 22 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
30 Nov
2016
Heat detections
655
in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
251MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Nov22 Dec
23 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Nov 2016 · 74 MW · 6 3 Dec 2016 · 105 MW · 23 4 Dec 2016 · 61 MW · 15 5 Dec 2016 · 81 MW · 12 6 Dec 2016 · 184 MW · 32 7 Dec 2016 · 1,572 MW · 107 8 Dec 2016 · 901 MW · 82 9 Dec 2016 · 493 MW · 82 10 Dec 2016 · 261 MW · 66 11 Dec 2016 · 524 MW · 55 12 Dec 2016 · 137 MW · 23 13 Dec 2016 · 59 MW · 14 14 Dec 2016 · 322 MW · 19 15 Dec 2016 · 68 MW · 19 17 Dec 2016 · 106 MW · 7 18 Dec 2016 · 8 MW · 1 19 Dec 2016 · 23 MW · 4 20 Dec 2016 · 175 MW · 49 21 Dec 2016 · 50 MW · 13 22 Dec 2016 · 25 MW · 15 23 Dec 2016 · 51 MW · 11
30 Nov 5 Dec 7 Dec 8 Dec 11 Dec 14 Dec 18 Dec 21 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
43km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (176 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. Raga where it started
    17,705 ha reached on 30 Nov
    0.3 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
30 Nov 37.5 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Dec 36.9 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Dec 36.1 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Dec 35.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Dec 36.0 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Dec 36.8 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Dec 37.4 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Dec 36.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Dec 36.3 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Dec 35.6 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Dec 35.9 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Dec 35.2 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Dec 35.6 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Dec 36.2 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Dec 34.5 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Dec 33.9 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Dec 33.8 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Dec 33.7 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Dec 33.8 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Dec 34.6 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Dec 35.2 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Dec 35.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Dec 36.0 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Dec after 37.3 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
24 Dec after 37.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Dec after 34.9 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Dec after 33.7 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Dec after 33.2 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Dec after 33.1 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Dec after 35.6 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Dec after 35.8 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Dec after 35.3 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Jan after 36.4 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Nov 2016
After · 29 Dec 2016

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 · 655Every 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 Raga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 November 2016 to 22 December 2016 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 December 2016 to 15 December 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,598 hectares (176.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (17,705 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 15 December 2016 → 22 December 2016.
  2. Start date: 3 December 2016 → 30 November 2016.

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.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 December 2016 to 15 December 2016. 655 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.