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Raga fire, 24 December 2022 Raga

Out · last detection 11 Jan 2023, 11:20 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2022 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,701 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 348th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 98 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2019Raga · 2016Raga · 2018Djema · 2018

Burnt area
5,701ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
24 Dec 2022 – 11 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
24 Dec
2022
Heat detections
290
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
88MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec11 Jan
11 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

25 Dec 2022 · 34 MW · 6 26 Dec 2022 · 101 MW · 26 27 Dec 2022 · 34 MW · 17 28 Dec 2022 · 46 MW · 18 29 Dec 2022 · 99 MW · 26 30 Dec 2022 · 131 MW · 24 31 Dec 2022 · 145 MW · 47 1 Jan 2023 · 112 MW · 32 2 Jan 2023 · 106 MW · 29 3 Jan 2023 · 49 MW · 9 4 Jan 2023 · 278 MW · 26 5 Jan 2023 · 163 MW · 20 6 Jan 2023 · 7 MW · 2 7 Jan 2023 · 2 MW · 1 10 Jan 2023 · 5 MW · 1 11 Jan 2023 · 97 MW · 6
25 Dec 28 Dec 31 Dec 3 Jan 4 Jan 6 Jan 11 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

34°high
41km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,595 ha in 2016, 42 ha in 2017, 2,979 ha in 2018, 3,012 ha in 2019, 390 ha in 2020, 2,392 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,136 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (57 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
    5,722 ha reached on 25 Dec
    0.1 %

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 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)
26 Dec 30.9 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Dec 30.1 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Dec 31.1 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Dec 32.0 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Dec 33.1 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Dec 33.8 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jan 33.8 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Jan 33.3 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Jan 33.4 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Jan 33.6 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Jan 33.1 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Jan 33.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Jan 33.4 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Jan 34.0 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Jan 34.9 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Jan 33.8 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Jan 33.2 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Jan after 33.7 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jan after 33.5 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Jan after 34.1 °C 13 % 36 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 · 17 Dec 2022
After · 18 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 24 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 107 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak107 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10154 µg/m³
Optical depth1.10
24252627282930311234567
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 · 290Every 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 24 December 2022 to 11 January 2023 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 December 2022 to 4 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,701 hectares (57.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (5,722 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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: 4 January 2023 → 11 January 2023.
  2. Start date: 26 December 2022 → 24 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 26 December 2022 to 4 January 2023. 290 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.