Burned area
satellite only8,506ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026 – 1 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
SS · South Sudan · –
Raga fire, 20 October 2026 Aweil North, Raga
Out · last detection 31 Oct 2026, 12:27 UTC
The fire started on 20 October 2026 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,506 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
Number 74 in South Sudan in 2026, of 228.
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.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Raga · 2025Raga · 2016Raga · 2017Raga · 2019
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Fire page data · version 2026-11-04matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only13days
20 Oct 2026 to 1 Nov 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 31 Oct 2026, 12:27 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only20 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only119
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 55 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026 – 1 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only569MW
Total radiative power on 27 October 2026; hotspots that day: 24.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 27 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model70.7FWI · very extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 1.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model40.8°C · 16% RH
High of 40.8 °C and minimum humidity of 16% on 21 October 2026; gusts of 39 km/h on 22 October 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Oct 2026 – 1 Nov 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 31 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
logLast day with fire: 31 October 2026 → 1 November 2026.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
logName: Aweil North → Raga.
-
logArea: 7,367 → 8,506 ha.
-
logPage published (7,367 ha).
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/raga-2026-10-15?v=2026-11-04A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire raga-2026-10-15.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-20 | 4 | 12 | 40.4 | 24.9 | 15 | 19.4 | 37.4 | 0 | 70.7 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-21 | 40 | 314 | 40.8 | 25.3 | 16 | 17.9 | 35.6 | 0 | 63.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-22 | 0 | 0 | 40.7 | 26.8 | 13 | 19.3 | 39.2 | 0 | 73.4 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-23 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 25.3 | 13 | 10.6 | 25.9 | 0 | 54.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-24 | 0 | 0 | 38.9 | 26.2 | 15 | 13 | 26.6 | 0 | 58.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-25 | 0 | 0 | 38.6 | 24.6 | 12 | 10.7 | 27.7 | 0 | 59.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-26 | 14 | 98 | 38.5 | 24 | 22 | 12 | 25.2 | 0 | 40 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-27 | 24 | 569 | 38.3 | 26.2 | 28 | 17.6 | 38.5 | 0.2 | 40.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-28 | 0 | 0 | 38 | 24.5 | 17 | 20.1 | 33.8 | 0 | 49.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-29 | 11 | 147 | 39.5 | 28.5 | 9 | 17.4 | 36.4 | 0 | 74.8 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-30 | 16 | 17 | 39.3 | 25.2 | 12 | 18.4 | 38.5 | 0 | 79.1 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-31 | 10 | 54 | 39.3 | 25 | 15 | 15.9 | 33.5 | 0 | 69.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-01 | 0 | 0 | 39.5 | 25.2 | 14 | 16 | 34.2 | 0 | 62.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-11-02 | 0 | 0 | 39.2 | 25.1 | 17 | 16.5 | 32 | 0 | 53.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-03 | 0 | 0 | 40.1 | 26.4 | 13 | 16.7 | 34.2 | 0 | 76.6 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-04 | 0 | 0 | 40.7 | 26 | 11 | 16.9 | 30.6 | 0 | 65.2 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-05 | 0 | 0 | 39.9 | 26.6 | 14 | 14.8 | 35.3 | 0 | 72.3 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-06 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 25.4 | 13 | 19.5 | 38.9 | 0 | 80 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-07 | 0 | 0 | 38.5 | 25.5 | 12 | 16.8 | 36 | 0 | 77.8 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-08 | 0 | 0 | 37.6 | 24.2 | 13 | 21.3 | 42.1 | 0 | 89.1 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-09 | 0 | 0 | 36.3 | 23.9 | 14 | 19.1 | 37.1 | 0 | 77.2 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-10 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 22.1 | 8 | 20.3 | 38.9 | 0 | 82.4 | muy_extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 8,506ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 20 Oct 2026 – 1 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 20 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 119
- in a single hotspot: 55 MW
- Danger at start
- 71
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 173MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Oct1 Nov
31 Oct 2026
How it evolved, day by day
20 Oct
24 Oct
27 Oct
30 Oct
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
41°high
39km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,564 ha in 2016, 4,330 ha in 2017, 3,477 ha in 2019, 1,620 ha in 2020, 3,866 ha in 2021, 2,540 ha in 2022, 1,013 ha in 2023, 603 ha in 2024, 5,757 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,381 ha that had burned before.
- 5,514 ha Raga fire, November 2025 54,607 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,177 ha Raga fire, November 2016 7,388 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,118 ha Raga fire, November 2017 28,109 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,516 ha Raga fire, November 2019 5,454 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 387 ha Raga fire, November 2016 15,176 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 242 ha Aweil North fire, October 2025 60,085 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
-
5,004 ha reached on 21 Oct0.8 %
-
Raga where it started3,570 ha reached on 20 Oct0.1 %
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 2025Built-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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct | 40.4 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 21 Oct | 40.8 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 22 Oct | 40.7 °C | 13 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 23 Oct | 39.0 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 24 Oct | 38.9 °C | 15 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 25 Oct | 38.6 °C | 12 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 26 Oct | 38.5 °C | 22 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Oct | 38.3 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Oct | 38.0 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 29 Oct | 39.5 °C | 9 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 30 Oct | 39.3 °C | 12 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 31 Oct | 39.3 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 1 Nov | 39.5 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 2 Nov after | 39.2 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 3 Nov after | 40.1 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 4 Nov after | 40.7 °C | 11 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 5 Nov after | 39.9 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 6 Nov after | 40.0 °C | 13 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 7 Nov after | 38.5 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 8 Nov after | 37.6 °C | 13 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 89 |
| 9 Nov after | 36.3 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 10 Nov after | 35.0 °C | 8 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 82 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Oct 2026
After · 8 Nov 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 23 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 97 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak97 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10174 µg/m³
Optical depth0.70
WHO 15
18 Oct21 Oct24 Oct27 Oct30 Oct
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 · 119Every 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
- 54,607 haRaga11 November 2025 · 20 days · 5 km away
- 28,109 haRaga3 November 2017 · 12 days · 8 km away
- 19,948 haRaga14 October 2026 · 23 days · 25 km away
- 21,192 haAweil NorthOctober 2016 · 16 days · 37 km away
- 188,288 haAweil West2 November 2025 · 38 days · 38 km away
- 23,104 haRaga5 November 2025 · 23 days · 39 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 20 October 2026 to 1 November 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 October 2026 to 31 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,506 hectares (85.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aweil North (5,004 ha, 0.8 %); Raga (3,570 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Raga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 12:27 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, class Very 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 31 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 31 October 2026 → 1 November 2026.
- Name: Aweil North → Raga.
- Area: 7,367 → 8,506 ha.
- Page published (7,367 ha).
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.
Report an error
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 26 October 2026 to 31 October 2026. 119 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.