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Raga fire, 20 December 2022 Raga

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2023, 11:26 UTC

The fire started on 20 December 2022 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,881 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 67th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 441 with a page). Number 15 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2016Raga · 2019Raga · 2018Raga · 2020

Burnt area
18,881ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
20 Dec 2022 – 16 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
20 Dec
2022
Heat detections
1,049
in a single hotspot: 141 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
212MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Dec16 Jan
16 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

20 Dec 2022 · 318 MW · 21 21 Dec 2022 · 50 MW · 12 22 Dec 2022 · 15 MW · 5 23 Dec 2022 · 17 MW · 3 24 Dec 2022 · 16 MW · 5 25 Dec 2022 · 24 MW · 6 26 Dec 2022 · 105 MW · 35 27 Dec 2022 · 71 MW · 28 28 Dec 2022 · 21 MW · 21 29 Dec 2022 · 153 MW · 32 30 Dec 2022 · 417 MW · 48 31 Dec 2022 · 144 MW · 52 1 Jan 2023 · 74 MW · 45 2 Jan 2023 · 198 MW · 55 3 Jan 2023 · 171 MW · 33 4 Jan 2023 · 117 MW · 22 5 Jan 2023 · 713 MW · 65 6 Jan 2023 · 284 MW · 105 7 Jan 2023 · 110 MW · 51 8 Jan 2023 · 180 MW · 50 9 Jan 2023 · 222 MW · 42 10 Jan 2023 · 257 MW · 50 11 Jan 2023 · 957 MW · 160 12 Jan 2023 · 685 MW · 79 13 Jan 2023 · 137 MW · 13 16 Jan 2023 · 45 MW · 11
20 Dec 24 Dec 28 Dec 1 Jan 5 Jan 9 Jan 11 Jan 13 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

36°high
41km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 48 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,994 ha in 2016, 4,162 ha in 2017, 2,034 ha in 2018, 6,198 ha in 2019, 10,804 ha in 2020, 3,844 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,699 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (189 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
    18,943 ha reached on 20 Dec
    0.3 %

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 35.1 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Dec 35.1 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Dec 35.1 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec 34.8 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Dec 33.3 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Dec 32.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Dec 31.4 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Dec 30.5 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Dec 31.6 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Dec 32.5 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Dec 33.3 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
31 Dec 34.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jan 34.2 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Jan 34.0 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Jan 34.0 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Jan 34.4 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Jan 33.7 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Jan 34.2 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan 33.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jan 34.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Jan 35.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Jan 34.3 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Jan 33.4 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Jan 33.9 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jan 33.7 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jan 34.7 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Jan 35.1 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Jan 35.7 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Jan after 34.8 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Jan after 35.1 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Jan after 36.4 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Jan after 36.9 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Jan after 37.1 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Jan after 36.5 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Jan after 36.3 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Jan after 36.8 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Jan after 36.1 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Jan after 36.9 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Dec 2022
After · 23 Jan 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 31 December 2022 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 guideline22 days
PM1084 µg/m³
Optical depth1.05
2526272829303112345678910111213141516
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 · 1,049Every 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 16 January 2023 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 December 2022 to 13 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,881 hectares (188.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (18,943 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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: 13 January 2023 → 16 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 December 2022 to 13 January 2023. 1,049 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.