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Raga fire, 20 December 2022 Raga

Out · last detection 30 Jan 2023, 12:04 UTC

The fire started on 20 December 2022 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 42 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 67,907 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 435 with a page). Number 2 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Djema · 2016Djema · 2020Djema · 2018Raga · 2018

Burnt area
67,907ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
42days
20 Dec 2022 – 30 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
20 Dec
2022
Heat detections
4,230
in a single hotspot: 145 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
491MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Dec30 Jan
30 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

20 Dec 2022 · 244 MW · 67 21 Dec 2022 · 239 MW · 106 22 Dec 2022 · 245 MW · 69 23 Dec 2022 · 469 MW · 133 24 Dec 2022 · 464 MW · 64 25 Dec 2022 · 427 MW · 94 26 Dec 2022 · 867 MW · 236 27 Dec 2022 · 551 MW · 149 28 Dec 2022 · 375 MW · 103 29 Dec 2022 · 711 MW · 123 30 Dec 2022 · 609 MW · 121 31 Dec 2022 · 493 MW · 127 1 Jan 2023 · 838 MW · 248 2 Jan 2023 · 1,247 MW · 196 3 Jan 2023 · 1,736 MW · 283 4 Jan 2023 · 2,136 MW · 253 5 Jan 2023 · 1,182 MW · 279 6 Jan 2023 · 1,100 MW · 321 7 Jan 2023 · 884 MW · 171 8 Jan 2023 · 417 MW · 118 9 Jan 2023 · 438 MW · 59 10 Jan 2023 · 456 MW · 127 11 Jan 2023 · 797 MW · 257 12 Jan 2023 · 235 MW · 71 13 Jan 2023 · 188 MW · 48 14 Jan 2023 · 375 MW · 61 15 Jan 2023 · 703 MW · 67 16 Jan 2023 · 1,000 MW · 110 17 Jan 2023 · 48 MW · 26 18 Jan 2023 · 79 MW · 19 19 Jan 2023 · 89 MW · 13 20 Jan 2023 · 85 MW · 16 21 Jan 2023 · 27 MW · 12 22 Jan 2023 · 92 MW · 20 23 Jan 2023 · 89 MW · 18 24 Jan 2023 · 115 MW · 19 26 Jan 2023 · 5 MW · 2 27 Jan 2023 · 58 MW · 16 28 Jan 2023 · 15 MW · 4 29 Jan 2023 · 2 MW · 3 30 Jan 2023 · 10 MW · 1
20 Dec 26 Dec 1 Jan 4 Jan 7 Jan 13 Jan 19 Jan 26 Jan

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
42km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 45,936 ha in 2016, 28,902 ha in 2017, 25,902 ha in 2018, 21,830 ha in 2019, 32,407 ha in 2020, 26,722 ha in 2021, 903 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 65,284 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 43% of the area of London (679 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
    50,581 ha reached on 21 Dec
    0.8 %

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 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)
20 Dec 34.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Dec 34.6 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Dec 34.7 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec 34.4 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Dec 32.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Dec 31.9 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Dec 30.6 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Dec 29.9 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Dec 30.8 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Dec 31.7 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
30 Dec 32.8 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Dec 33.4 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan 33.3 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Jan 32.9 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
3 Jan 32.9 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jan 33.1 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Jan 32.8 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Jan 33.2 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan 33.1 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Jan 33.7 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Jan 34.5 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Jan 33.4 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Jan 33.0 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jan 33.4 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Jan 33.3 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Jan 33.7 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Jan 33.8 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Jan 34.5 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Jan 34.0 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Jan 34.2 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Jan 35.2 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Jan 36.2 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Jan 36.0 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Jan 35.5 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Jan 35.1 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 Jan 35.9 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Jan 35.6 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Jan 36.1 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Jan 36.8 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Jan 37.2 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
29 Jan 37.0 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Jan 37.1 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Jan after 37.7 °C 9 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Feb after 36.9 °C 7 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Feb after 34.9 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
3 Feb after 34.2 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
4 Feb after 34.8 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
5 Feb after 36.1 °C 8 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Feb after 37.7 °C 7 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
7 Feb after 35.3 °C 7 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
8 Feb after 33.3 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
9 Feb after 34.2 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Dec 2022
After · 6 Feb 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 5 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline25 days
PM1084 µg/m³
Optical depth1.20
252627282930311234567891011121314151617181920212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 4,230Every 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 20 December 2022 to 30 January 2023 (42 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 December 2022 to 23 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 67,907 hectares (679.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (50,581 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 42 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.

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: 23 January 2023 → 30 January 2023.
  2. Start date: 27 December 2022 → 20 December 2022.

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 December 2022 to 23 January 2023. 4,230 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.