Raga fire, 14 November 2020 Raga
The fire started on 14 November 2020 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 51,319 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 23th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 3 in South Sudan in 2020, of 190.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Raga · 2019Raga · 2016Raga · 2017Raga · 2017
- Burnt area
- 51,319ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 25days
- 14 Nov 2020 – 8 Dec 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 14 Nov
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 1,680
- in a single hotspot: 155 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 385MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16,650 ha in 2016, 19,644 ha in 2017, 1,259 ha in 2018, 23,613 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 39,763 ha that had burned before.
- 18,727 ha Raga fire, November 2019 37,242 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,466 ha Raga fire, October 2016 59,950 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,460 ha Raga fire, November 2017 9,265 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,586 ha Raga fire, November 2017 8,337 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 42 ha Raga fire, November 2016 5,434 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started51,708 ha reached on 14 Nov0.8 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Nov | 34.8 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Nov | 34.2 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 16 Nov | 34.1 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Nov | 35.0 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 18 Nov | 35.3 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 19 Nov | 35.8 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 20 Nov | 36.2 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 21 Nov | 35.3 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 22 Nov | 34.9 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 23 Nov | 34.9 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 24 Nov | 36.0 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Nov | 36.2 °C | 17 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 26 Nov | 36.5 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Nov | 36.1 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 Nov | 36.0 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 29 Nov | 34.8 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 30 Nov | 33.9 °C | 10 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Dec | 34.5 °C | 10 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Dec | 35.1 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 3 Dec | 35.3 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 4 Dec | 35.6 °C | 10 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 5 Dec | 35.4 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 6 Dec | 35.7 °C | 8 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 7 Dec | 36.5 °C | 9 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Dec | 36.2 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 9 Dec after | 36.4 °C | 10 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Dec after | 36.4 °C | 10 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 11 Dec after | 36.9 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 12 Dec after | 37.5 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 13 Dec after | 37.4 °C | 12 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 14 Dec after | 37.7 °C | 9 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 15 Dec after | 37.4 °C | 8 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 16 Dec after | 36.3 °C | 9 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 17 Dec after | 34.7 °C | 11 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 18 Dec after | 34.0 °C | 12 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 1,680Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 37,242 haRaga26 November 2019 · 18 days · 9 km away
- 59,950 haRaga27 October 2016 · 18 days · 14 km away
- 42,060 haRaga10 November 2021 · 25 days · 20 km away
- 36,294 haRaga15 November 2025 · 29 days · 25 km away
- 16,893 haRaga16 November 2022 · 13 days · 25 km away
- 188,386 haAweil West2 November 2025 · 38 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Raga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 November 2020 to 8 December 2020 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 November 2020 to 2 December 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 51,319 hectares (513.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Raga (51,708 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 2 December 2020 → 8 December 2020.
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
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 14 November 2020 to 2 December 2020. 1,680 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.