Raga fire, 22 October 2026 Raga
The fire started on 22 October 2026 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,486 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 110th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 441 with a page). Number 38 in South Sudan in 2026, of 207.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Raga · 2016Raga · 2019Raga · 2025Raga · 2022
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 11:51 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. 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.
- Burnt area
- 12,486ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 22 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 22 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 204
- in a single hotspot: 226 MW
- Danger at start
- 50
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 373MW
- 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 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,745 ha in 2016, 1,244 ha in 2017, 8 ha in 2018, 6,111 ha in 2019, 498 ha in 2020, 3,211 ha in 2021, 3,762 ha in 2022, 545 ha in 2024, 6,796 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,891 ha that had burned before.
- 6,697 ha Raga fire, October 2016 17,531 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,102 ha Raga fire, November 2019 12,462 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,796 ha Raga fire, November 2025 23,274 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,206 ha Raga fire, November 2022 7,662 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 77 ha Raga fire, November 2025 23,104 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 41 ha Aweil West fire, November 2025 188,386 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 started12,598 ha reached on 22 Oct0.2 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Oct | 39.7 °C | 13 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 23 Oct | 37.7 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Oct | 38.1 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Oct | 38.1 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Oct | 38.7 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 27 Oct | 38.2 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 50 |
| 28 Oct | 37.2 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 29 Oct | 38.8 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 30 Oct | 38.5 °C | 12 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 31 Oct | 38.6 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 1 Nov | 38.8 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 2 Nov | 38.7 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 3 Nov | 39.8 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
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 23 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 159 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 83: 5.5 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 · 204Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Raga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 October 2026 to 3 November 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,486 hectares (124.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Raga (12,598 ha, 0.2 %).
- Is the Raga fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 11:51 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 3 November 2026.
- Page published (12,486 ha).
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 29 October 2026 to 2 November 2026. 204 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.
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.