How long did the Raga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 November 2025 to 17 November 2025 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 November 2025 to 13 November 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,060 hectares (50.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Raga (5,112 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 45 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 · 5 Nov 2025 – 17 Nov 2025

Raga fire, 5 November 2025 Raga

Out · last detection 15 Nov 2025, 11:42 UTC

The fire started on 5 November 2025 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,060 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 435th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 290 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2025 Raga · 2025 Raga · 2026 Raga · 2025

Burnt area: 5,060ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 5 Nov 2025 – 17 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 5 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 65; in a single hotspot: 129 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 123MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Nov17 Nov

Play back 15 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

6 Nov 9 Nov 11 Nov 14 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

45km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 135 ha in 2016, 2 ha in 2018, 427 ha in 2020, 886 ha in 2022, 1,155 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,458 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

5,112 ha reached on 6 Nov

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 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)
5 Nov	38.0 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Very high 41
6 Nov	36.9 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Very high 48
7 Nov	37.5 °C	10 %	39 km/h	Extreme 53
8 Nov	37.5 °C	10 %	40 km/h	Extreme 54
9 Nov	37.0 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 54
10 Nov	36.7 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Extreme 51
11 Nov	37.2 °C	12 %	33 km/h	Extreme 50
12 Nov	37.1 °C	17 %	23 km/h	Very high 45
13 Nov	37.5 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 58
14 Nov	36.0 °C	13 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
15 Nov	33.6 °C	11 %	41 km/h	Extreme 58
16 Nov	33.7 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
17 Nov	34.5 °C	12 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
18 Nov after	36.0 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Extreme 56
19 Nov after	36.8 °C	16 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
20 Nov after	36.7 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
21 Nov after	36.3 °C	9 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
22 Nov after	37.1 °C	8 %	32 km/h	Extreme 53
23 Nov after	37.9 °C	14 %	25 km/h	Very high 50
24 Nov after	38.3 °C	15 %	28 km/h	Extreme 52
25 Nov after	37.3 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 63
26 Nov after	36.9 °C	12 %	42 km/h	Extreme 64
27 Nov after	36.8 °C	12 %	36 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Oct 2025

After · 24 Nov 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 109 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak109 µg/m³

Days over the guideline8 days

PM10140 µg/m³

Optical depth0.73

WHO 15

6 Nov9 Nov12 Nov15 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 · 65Every 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 5 November 2025 to 17 November 2025 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 November 2025 to 13 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,060 hectares (50.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Raga (5,112 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 45 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: 13 November 2025 → 17 November 2025.
26 October 2026 Start date: 8 November 2025 → 5 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.

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 November 2025 to 13 November 2025. 65 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