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SS · South Sudan · –

Raga fire, 10 November 2021 Raga

Out · last detection 5 Dec 2021, 22:53 UTC

The fire started on 10 November 2021 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 42,060 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 17th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 338 with a page). Number 2 in South Sudan in 2021, of 212.

Compare with…
Burnt area
42,060ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
10 Nov 2021 – 4 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
10 Nov
2021
Heat detections
1,405
in a single hotspot: 253 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
359MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Nov4 Dec
5 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Nov 2021 · 44 MW · 11 11 Nov 2021 · 119 MW · 29 12 Nov 2021 · 182 MW · 15 13 Nov 2021 · 114 MW · 18 14 Nov 2021 · 1,243 MW · 68 15 Nov 2021 · 386 MW · 84 16 Nov 2021 · 956 MW · 167 17 Nov 2021 · 291 MW · 40 18 Nov 2021 · 337 MW · 64 19 Nov 2021 · 1,826 MW · 100 20 Nov 2021 · 724 MW · 120 21 Nov 2021 · 998 MW · 222 22 Nov 2021 · 333 MW · 112 23 Nov 2021 · 539 MW · 104 24 Nov 2021 · 394 MW · 64 25 Nov 2021 · 297 MW · 48 26 Nov 2021 · 259 MW · 70 27 Nov 2021 · 231 MW · 45 28 Nov 2021 · 2 MW · 2 29 Nov 2021 · 2 MW · 1 30 Nov 2021 · 27 MW · 7 1 Dec 2021 · 3 MW · 3 2 Dec 2021 · 15 MW · 5 3 Dec 2021 · 2 MW · 1 4 Dec 2021 · 9 MW · 3 5 Dec 2021 · 4 MW · 2
10 Nov 19 Nov 28 Nov 4 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
38km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 24,433 ha in 2016, 9,461 ha in 2017, 546 ha in 2018, 15,979 ha in 2019, 11,814 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 33,521 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 27% of the area of London (421 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
    42,387 ha reached on 10 Nov
    0.7 %

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)
10 Nov 36.9 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Nov 36.8 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Nov 36.7 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Nov 37.3 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Nov 38.3 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Nov 38.3 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Nov 37.6 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Nov 38.3 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Nov 38.0 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Nov 38.1 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Nov 37.2 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Nov 35.8 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Nov 35.8 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Nov 36.2 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Nov 36.2 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Nov 36.4 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Nov 36.6 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Nov 37.1 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Nov 37.7 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
29 Nov 38.3 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
30 Nov 38.5 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
1 Dec 38.0 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
2 Dec 36.4 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Dec 37.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Dec 37.6 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Dec after 38.3 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Dec after 36.6 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Dec after 37.9 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 Dec after 37.7 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
9 Dec after 35.4 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Dec after 35.8 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
11 Dec after 37.2 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Dec after 37.3 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Dec after 37.9 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Dec after 38.0 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 43.7, a minimum humidity of 23% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 30.

FWI at the start 43.7
Minimum humidity 23 %
Days without rain 4
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Raga fire, November 2023
11,159 ha 11 days FWI 38.1 Min. humidity 23 % 89 km away, in 2023

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

What happened to them

11 days
median duration
7,390 ha
median area
27 %
went past 10,000 ha
1.6 mm
rain at the end (median; 2 of 30 had it)

It was 5.7 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 25 days, against 11 days.

Only 1 of its 30 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 28 of 30, 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 1.6 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
38km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 4 Dec, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 2 of 30, with a median of 1.6 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 · 3 Nov 2021
After · 11 Dec 2021

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 · 1,405Every 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 10 November 2021 to 4 December 2021 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 November 2021 to 28 November 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,060 hectares (420.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (42,387 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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: 30. Their median duration was 11 days and their median area 7,390 ha; 27 % went past 10,000 ha. Only 1 of its 30 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 28 of 30, 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 1.6 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 November 2021 → 4 December 2021.
  2. Start date: 13 November 2021 → 10 November 2021.

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.

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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 13 November 2021 to 28 November 2021. 1,405 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.