How long did the Raga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 November 2025 to 27 November 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 November 2025 to 24 November 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,359 hectares (423.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Raga (42,782 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.

SS · South Sudan · 6 Nov 2025 – 27 Nov 2025

Raga fire, 6 November 2025 Raga

Out · last detection 27 Nov 2025, 11:17 UTC

The fire started on 6 November 2025 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 42,359 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 25 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2023 Raga · 2016 Raga · 2016 Raga · 2021

Burnt area: 42,359ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 6 Nov 2025 – 27 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 6 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 829; in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 327MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Nov27 Nov

Play back 27 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

6 Nov 11 Nov 18 Nov 26 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high

43km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 14,720 ha in 2016, 7,020 ha in 2017, 2,560 ha in 2018, 2,638 ha in 2019, 4,208 ha in 2020, 15,341 ha in 2021, 8,539 ha in 2022, 8,636 ha in 2023, 4,675 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 33,593 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 27% of the area of London (424 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

Raga where it started

42,782 ha reached on 6 Nov

0.7 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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	Danger (FWI)
6 Nov	36.5 °C	12 %	32 km/h	Very high 42
7 Nov	37.1 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Very high 48
8 Nov	37.3 °C	10 %	40 km/h	Extreme 51
9 Nov	36.6 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 51
10 Nov	36.5 °C	12 %	34 km/h	Very high 48
11 Nov	37.0 °C	13 %	33 km/h	Very high 48
12 Nov	36.7 °C	18 %	23 km/h	Very high 43
13 Nov	37.3 °C	14 %	42 km/h	Extreme 55
14 Nov	36.0 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 56
15 Nov	33.4 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 54
16 Nov	33.6 °C	13 %	36 km/h	Extreme 53
17 Nov	34.4 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 53
18 Nov	35.8 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
19 Nov	36.6 °C	17 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
20 Nov	36.6 °C	13 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52
21 Nov	36.2 °C	9 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
22 Nov	36.9 °C	9 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
23 Nov	37.4 °C	16 %	26 km/h	Very high 48
24 Nov	37.6 °C	17 %	29 km/h	Extreme 50
25 Nov	36.9 °C	16 %	38 km/h	Extreme 58
26 Nov	36.6 °C	13 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
27 Nov	36.5 °C	12 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
28 Nov after	35.3 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 57
29 Nov after	36.4 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Extreme 56
30 Nov after	36.8 °C	17 %	43 km/h	Extreme 60
1 Dec after	36.5 °C	19 %	42 km/h	Extreme 58
2 Dec after	35.8 °C	18 %	40 km/h	Extreme 56
3 Dec after	36.0 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Extreme 53
4 Dec after	36.3 °C	17 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
5 Dec after	37.0 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Extreme 50
6 Dec after	36.8 °C	18 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
7 Dec after	37.0 °C	17 %	25 km/h	Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Oct 2025

After · 4 Dec 2025

Before After

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 11 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM10133 µg/m³

Optical depth0.78

WHO 15

9 Nov13 Nov17 Nov21 Nov25 Nov

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 · 829Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 6 November 2025 to 27 November 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 November 2025 to 24 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,359 hectares (423.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Raga (42,782 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 24 November 2025 → 27 November 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 11 November 2025 → 6 November 2025.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 November 2025 to 24 November 2025. 829 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned