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Ulang fire, March 2018 Ulang

Out · last detection 18 Mar 2018, 23:54 UTC

The fire started on 6 March 2018 in Ulang, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,139 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 116th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 48 in South Sudan in 2018, of 120.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ulang · 2016Ulang · 2022Ulang · 2019Ulang · 2017

Burnt area
8,139ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
6 Mar 2018 – 17 Mar 2018
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
6 Mar
2018
Heat detections
392
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
419MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Mar17 Mar
18 Mar 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Mar 2018 · 90 MW · 12 7 Mar 2018 · 496 MW · 41 8 Mar 2018 · 209 MW · 32 9 Mar 2018 · 472 MW · 38 10 Mar 2018 · 635 MW · 39 11 Mar 2018 · 16 MW · 4 12 Mar 2018 · 1,243 MW · 45 13 Mar 2018 · 298 MW · 42 14 Mar 2018 · 1,455 MW · 73 15 Mar 2018 · 242 MW · 30 16 Mar 2018 · 88 MW · 10 17 Mar 2018 · 203 MW · 7 18 Mar 2018 · 4 MW · 2
6 Mar 8 Mar 10 Mar 12 Mar 14 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar

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
41km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 25 Mar.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 683 ha in 2016, 7,140 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,935 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (81 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. Ulang where it started
    7,799 ha reached on 3 Mar
    1.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
6 Mar 38.7 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Mar 38.6 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Mar 39.4 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Mar 40.9 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Mar 40.1 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Mar 38.6 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Mar 37.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Mar 38.0 °C 30 % 28 km/h 1.8 mm High 27
14 Mar 37.4 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Mar 39.5 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
16 Mar 38.2 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
17 Mar 38.8 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Mar after 39.5 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Mar after 37.7 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 46
20 Mar after 38.4 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Mar after 38.1 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 40
22 Mar after 39.2 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 45
23 Mar after 38.6 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Mar after 38.7 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 52
25 Mar after 38.5 °C 30 % 43 km/h 1.8 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Feb 2018
After · 24 Mar 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 392Every 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 Ulang fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 March 2018 and 17 March 2018: 12 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,139 hectares (81.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ulang (7,799 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 392 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 2020, 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.