Skip to content
worldfires
en
SS · South Sudan · →

Raga fire, 7 December 2025 Raga

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2026, 23:36 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2025 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 39 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 111,779 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 5th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 6 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2020Raga · 2018Raga · 2022Raga · 2024

Burnt area
111,779ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
39days
7 Dec 2025 – 14 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
7 Dec
2025
Heat detections
4,144
in a single hotspot: 153 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
740MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec14 Jan
15 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

7 Dec 2025 · 81 MW · 11 8 Dec 2025 · 452 MW · 33 9 Dec 2025 · 21 MW · 6 10 Dec 2025 · 18 MW · 2 11 Dec 2025 · 234 MW · 21 12 Dec 2025 · 72 MW · 17 13 Dec 2025 · 189 MW · 28 14 Dec 2025 · 409 MW · 70 15 Dec 2025 · 2,262 MW · 333 16 Dec 2025 · 2,084 MW · 223 17 Dec 2025 · 2,589 MW · 296 18 Dec 2025 · 1,579 MW · 192 19 Dec 2025 · 998 MW · 280 20 Dec 2025 · 1,128 MW · 126 21 Dec 2025 · 900 MW · 130 22 Dec 2025 · 1,612 MW · 219 23 Dec 2025 · 891 MW · 94 24 Dec 2025 · 247 MW · 101 25 Dec 2025 · 264 MW · 83 26 Dec 2025 · 593 MW · 104 27 Dec 2025 · 2,540 MW · 184 28 Dec 2025 · 230 MW · 30 29 Dec 2025 · 135 MW · 32 30 Dec 2025 · 20 MW · 9 31 Dec 2025 · 1,903 MW · 105 1 Jan 2026 · 578 MW · 64 2 Jan 2026 · 729 MW · 127 3 Jan 2026 · 502 MW · 89 4 Jan 2026 · 777 MW · 201 5 Jan 2026 · 445 MW · 54 6 Jan 2026 · 318 MW · 54 7 Jan 2026 · 1,041 MW · 75 8 Jan 2026 · 280 MW · 100 9 Jan 2026 · 493 MW · 135 10 Jan 2026 · 96 MW · 15 11 Jan 2026 · 56 MW · 25 12 Jan 2026 · 669 MW · 78 13 Jan 2026 · 930 MW · 133 14 Jan 2026 · 690 MW · 226 15 Jan 2026 · 542 MW · 39
7 Dec 13 Dec 17 Dec 19 Dec 25 Dec 31 Dec 6 Jan 12 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

35°high
42km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 62,040 ha in 2016, 42,429 ha in 2017, 45,128 ha in 2018, 44,250 ha in 2019, 56,724 ha in 2020, 49,316 ha in 2021, 36,476 ha in 2022, 19,667 ha in 2023, 65,845 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 109,485 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 71% of the area of London (1,118 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
    112,261 ha reached on 7 Dec
    1.8 %

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 35.1 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Dec 35.2 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Dec 33.0 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Dec 32.3 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Dec 32.3 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Dec 33.1 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Dec 32.6 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Dec 32.2 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Dec 31.4 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Dec 30.1 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Dec 30.9 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Dec 31.4 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Dec 31.7 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Dec 33.1 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Dec 33.4 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Dec 33.5 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Dec 31.9 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Dec 33.7 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec 35.2 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Dec 34.7 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Dec 35.0 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec 33.5 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Dec 33.1 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Dec 32.9 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
31 Dec 31.6 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jan 33.3 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Jan 34.9 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Jan 35.0 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Jan 34.4 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Jan 34.3 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Jan 34.1 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan 34.0 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jan 35.0 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Jan 34.8 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Jan 33.1 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan 33.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Jan 34.2 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Jan 33.3 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Jan 32.3 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Jan after 32.2 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Jan after 31.8 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Jan after 34.5 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Jan after 34.4 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Jan after 34.8 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Jan after 35.0 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Jan after 35.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Jan after 36.5 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Jan after 36.0 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jan after 36.7 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Nov 2025
After · 21 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 16 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 123 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 70: 4.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak123 µg/m³
Days over the guideline27 days
PM10157 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678910
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 · 4,144Every 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 14 January 2026 (39 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 December 2025 to 7 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 111,779 hectares (1,117.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (112,261 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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: 7 January 2026 → 14 January 2026.
  2. Start date: 14 December 2025 → 7 December 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?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 7 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 December 2025 to 7 January 2026. 4,144 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.