Raga fire, 10 December 2022 Raga
The fire started on 10 December 2022 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,774 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 184th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 435 with a page). Number 48 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Raga · 2017Djema · 2020Raga · 2019Raga · 2016
- Burnt area
- 8,774ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 10 Dec 2022 – 19 Dec 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 10 Dec
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 237
- in a single hotspot: 71 MW
- Danger at start
- 51
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 267MW
- 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 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,839 ha in 2016, 4,814 ha in 2017, 14 ha in 2018, 4,363 ha in 2019, 2,792 ha in 2020, 4,818 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,515 ha that had burned before.
- 3,937 ha Raga fire, November 2017 19,066 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,731 ha Djema fire, December 2020 72,733 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,798 ha Raga fire, December 2019 5,401 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 375 ha Raga fire, December 2016 10,495 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 36 ha Raga fire, December 2019 6,343 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 14 ha Raga fire, December 2018 18,640 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 started8,814 ha reached on 10 Dec0.1 %
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 2020Inside 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 Dec | 32.4 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 11 Dec | 32.5 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 12 Dec | 33.5 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 13 Dec | 33.4 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Dec | 33.0 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 15 Dec | 33.1 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 16 Dec | 33.2 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 17 Dec | 33.6 °C | 16 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 18 Dec | 33.7 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 19 Dec | 33.9 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 20 Dec after | 34.0 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 21 Dec after | 34.0 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 22 Dec after | 34.2 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 23 Dec after | 33.2 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Dec after | 31.5 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 25 Dec after | 31.2 °C | 16 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 26 Dec after | 29.6 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 27 Dec after | 29.0 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 28 Dec after | 29.8 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 Dec after | 30.9 °C | 16 % | 39 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.
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 · CopernicusOn 17 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 87 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 237Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 25,772 haRaga24 December 2024 · 30 days · 5 km away
- 72,733 haDjema10 December 2020 · 30 days · 9 km away
- 19,066 haRaga27 November 2017 · 17 days · 9 km away
- 156,058 haDjema22 December 2025 · 48 days · 24 km away
- 28,865 haRaga25 December 2024 · 18 days · 32 km away
- 27,092 haRaga7 December 2016 · 24 days · 33 km away
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 December 2022 to 19 December 2022 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 December 2022 to 19 December 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,774 hectares (87.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Raga (8,814 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 40 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 14 December 2022 → 10 December 2022.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 December 2022 to 19 December 2022. 237 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.
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.