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SS · South Sudan · –

Raga fire, 7 December 2025 Raga

Out · last detection 29 Dec 2025, 11:18 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2025 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,820 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 188 in South Sudan in 2025, of 235.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2025Raga · 2016

Burnt area
5,820ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
7 Dec 2025 – 29 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
7 Dec
2025
Heat detections
148
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
59MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec29 Dec
29 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

7 Dec 2025 · 9 MW · 2 8 Dec 2025 · 42 MW · 3 10 Dec 2025 · 18 MW · 2 11 Dec 2025 · 80 MW · 3 12 Dec 2025 · 89 MW · 11 13 Dec 2025 · 258 MW · 26 14 Dec 2025 · 7 MW · 2 15 Dec 2025 · 21 MW · 5 16 Dec 2025 · 121 MW · 16 17 Dec 2025 · 32 MW · 7 18 Dec 2025 · 133 MW · 24 19 Dec 2025 · 11 MW · 3 20 Dec 2025 · 92 MW · 4 21 Dec 2025 · 28 MW · 3 22 Dec 2025 · 15 MW · 5 23 Dec 2025 · 45 MW · 6 24 Dec 2025 · 137 MW · 10 25 Dec 2025 · 0 MW · 1 26 Dec 2025 · 46 MW · 7 27 Dec 2025 · 32 MW · 5 29 Dec 2025 · 15 MW · 3
7 Dec 13 Dec 18 Dec 23 Dec 29 Dec

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
37km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 598 ha in 2016, 529 ha in 2017, 1,392 ha in 2020, 36 ha in 2021, 780 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,348 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (58 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
    5,854 ha reached on 7 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 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
7 Dec 35.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Dec 35.9 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Dec 33.9 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Dec 32.9 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Dec 32.7 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Dec 33.5 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Dec 33.2 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Dec 32.4 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Dec 31.3 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Dec 30.2 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Dec 30.9 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Dec 31.5 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Dec 31.9 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec 33.2 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Dec 33.8 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Dec 34.1 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec 33.1 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Dec 33.6 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec 35.7 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Dec 35.2 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Dec 35.2 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec 33.9 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Dec 33.5 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Dec after 33.5 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
31 Dec after 32.2 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jan after 33.7 °C 8 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Jan after 35.6 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Jan after 35.2 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Jan after 34.7 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Jan after 34.4 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Jan after 34.1 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Jan after 34.2 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Jan after 35.4 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Nov 2025
After · 5 Jan 2026

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 12 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10154 µg/m³
Optical depth0.37
10 Dec14 Dec18 Dec22 Dec26 Dec
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 · 148Every 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 7 December 2025 to 29 December 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 December 2025 to 23 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,820 hectares (58.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (5,854 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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: 23 December 2025 → 29 December 2025.
  2. Start date: 12 December 2025 → 7 December 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 12 December 2025 to 23 December 2025. 148 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.