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Raga fire, 24 November 2020 Raga

Out · last detection 2 Dec 2020, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 24 November 2020 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,599 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 363th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 435 with a page). Number 164 in South Sudan in 2020, of 190.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.6 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 · 2016Raga · 2019Raga · 2021Raga · 2020

Burnt area
5,599ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
24 Nov 2020 – 2 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
24 Nov
2020
Heat detections
202
in a single hotspot: 29 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
80MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Nov2 Dec
2 Dec 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Nov 2020 · 67 MW · 19 25 Nov 2020 · 97 MW · 19 26 Nov 2020 · 144 MW · 51 27 Nov 2020 · 213 MW · 28 28 Nov 2020 · 66 MW · 31 29 Nov 2020 · 44 MW · 26 30 Nov 2020 · 51 MW · 18 1 Dec 2020 · 22 MW · 8 2 Dec 2020 · 16 MW · 2
24 Nov 26 Nov 27 Nov 28 Nov 30 Nov 2 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

37°high
36km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,911 ha in 2016, 1,333 ha in 2017, 3,333 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,141 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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
    5,645 ha reached on 24 Nov
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
24 Nov 36.3 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Nov 36.5 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Nov 36.7 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Nov 36.2 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
28 Nov 36.2 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Nov 35.1 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Nov 34.3 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Dec 34.7 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Dec 35.4 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Dec after 35.6 °C 8 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
4 Dec after 35.9 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Dec after 35.7 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Dec after 35.9 °C 7 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Dec after 36.7 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Dec after 36.4 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
9 Dec after 36.7 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
10 Dec after 36.7 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Dec after 37.2 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
12 Dec after 37.8 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Nov 2020
After · 9 Dec 2020

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 · 202Every 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 24 November 2020 to 2 December 2020 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 November 2020 to 2 December 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,599 hectares (56.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (5,645 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.
  1. Start date: 25 November 2020 → 24 November 2020.

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.

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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 25 November 2020 to 2 December 2020. 202 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.

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.