Raga fire, 2 January 2022 Raga
The fire started on 2 January 2022 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,258 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 244th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 64 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Djema · 2019Raga · 2020Djema · 2018Raga · 2021
- Burnt area
- 7,258ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 2 Jan 2022 – 6 Jan 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 2 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 265
- in a single hotspot: 66 MW
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 293MW
- 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 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 867 ha in 2016, 2,526 ha in 2017, 3,093 ha in 2018, 5,834 ha in 2019, 3,178 ha in 2020, 438 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,110 ha that had burned before.
- 5,726 ha Djema fire, December 2019 73,476 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,528 ha Raga fire, December 2020 67,410 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,657 ha Djema fire, December 2018 83,573 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 381 ha Raga fire, January 2021 8,509 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 226 ha Raga fire, December 2016 24,146 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 192 ha Raga fire, December 2016 7,208 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 started7,284 ha reached on 29 Dec0.1 %
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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Jan | 34.5 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 3 Jan | 32.4 °C | 13 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 4 Jan | 32.3 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 5 Jan | 33.0 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 6 Jan | 34.4 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 7 Jan after | 35.8 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 8 Jan after | 36.1 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 9 Jan after | 36.5 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 10 Jan after | 37.1 °C | 14 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 11 Jan after | 36.7 °C | 16 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Jan after | 36.1 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 13 Jan after | 36.5 °C | 17 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Jan after | 34.8 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 15 Jan after | 35.0 °C | 24 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Jan after | 33.3 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
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 · 265Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Raga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2022 and 6 January 2022: 5 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 7,258 hectares (72.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Raga (7,284 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 265 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.
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.