Raga fire, 5 December 2025 Raga, Aweil Centre
The fire started on 5 December 2025 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,880 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 59th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 45 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Raga · 2016Raga · 2020Raga · 2017Raga · 2021
- Burnt area
- 21,880ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 25days
- 5 Dec 2025 – 29 Dec 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 5 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 449
- in a single hotspot: 129 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 249MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17,934 ha in 2016, 7,585 ha in 2017, 44 ha in 2018, 2,978 ha in 2019, 6,644 ha in 2020, 6,579 ha in 2021, 3,106 ha in 2022, 4,227 ha in 2023, 7,708 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 21,185 ha that had burned before.
- 8,626 ha Raga fire, December 2016 13,170 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,050 ha Raga fire, December 2020 7,468 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,533 ha Raga fire, December 2017 11,635 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,775 ha Raga fire, December 2021 6,429 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,372 ha Raga fire, January 2016 21,779 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 617 ha Aweil Centre fire, December 2021 5,320 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 107 ha Raga fire, December 2024 7,009 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started19,682 ha reached on 5 Dec0.3 %
-
2,309 ha reached on 5 Dec0.2 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Dec | 35.4 °C | 20 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Dec | 35.2 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Dec | 36.3 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Dec | 36.7 °C | 20 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 9 Dec | 34.0 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 Dec | 32.9 °C | 19 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 11 Dec | 33.3 °C | 19 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 12 Dec | 33.7 °C | 19 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 13 Dec | 33.4 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 14 Dec | 32.8 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 15 Dec | 32.2 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 16 Dec | 30.7 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 17 Dec | 31.4 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 18 Dec | 31.8 °C | 17 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 19 Dec | 32.3 °C | 16 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 20 Dec | 33.4 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Dec | 33.9 °C | 13 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 22 Dec | 34.0 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Dec | 33.1 °C | 14 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Dec | 34.8 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Dec | 35.9 °C | 14 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Dec | 35.3 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 27 Dec | 35.6 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 Dec | 33.9 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 29 Dec | 33.9 °C | 11 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 30 Dec after | 33.7 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 31 Dec after | 31.7 °C | 12 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Jan after | 34.0 °C | 9 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Jan after | 35.9 °C | 11 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 3 Jan after | 35.4 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 4 Jan after | 34.9 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 5 Jan after | 34.9 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Jan after | 34.5 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 7 Jan after | 34.8 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 8 Jan after | 36.0 °C | 15 % | 34 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.
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 · CopernicusOn 18 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 449Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 21,779 haRaga4 January 2016 · 29 days · 3 km away
- 36,949 haRaga4 December 2021 · 11 days · 25 km away
- 58,291 haRaga1 December 2019 · 18 days · 26 km away
- 33,836 haAweil Centre24 November 2016 · 26 days · 26 km away
- 62,637 haRaga6 December 2016 · 23 days · 29 km away
- 42,442 haAweil Centre19 November 2017 · 25 days · 38 km away
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 December 2025 to 29 December 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 December 2025 to 22 December 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,880 hectares (218.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Raga (19,682 ha, 0.3 %); Aweil Centre (2,309 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
- 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.
- Last day with fire: 22 December 2025 → 29 December 2025.
- Start date: 9 December 2025 → 5 December 2025.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 December 2025 to 22 December 2025. 449 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.
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.