How long did the Ulang fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 February 2022 to 28 February 2022 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 February 2022 to 25 February 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,317 hectares (53.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ulang (5,009 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 78, 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2022-02-08 → 2022-02-28

Ulang fire, 8 February 2022 Ulang

Out · last detection 28 Feb 2022, 10:22 UTC

The fire started on 8 February 2022 in Ulang, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,317 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 257th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 109 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ulang · 2021 Ulang · 2016 Akobo · 2017 Ulang · 2019

Burnt area: 5,317ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 8 Feb 2022 – 28 Feb 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 8 Feb; 2022
Heat detections: 303; in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 174MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Feb28 Feb

Play back 28 Feb 2022

How it evolved, day by day

11 Feb 14 Feb 17 Feb 20 Feb 21 Feb 24 Feb 28 Feb

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

40°high

52km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,288 ha in 2016, 981 ha in 2017, 2,741 ha in 2018, 272 ha in 2019, 1,053 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,500 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 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

Ulang where it started

5,009 ha reached on 11 Feb

1.0 %

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)
14 Feb	39.6 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
15 Feb	39.6 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
16 Feb	40.1 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
17 Feb	40.2 °C	11 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
18 Feb	40.1 °C	10 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
19 Feb	40.5 °C	6 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
20 Feb	38.6 °C	7 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
21 Feb	35.9 °C	9 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
22 Feb	38.2 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
23 Feb	39.4 °C	9 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
24 Feb	40.2 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
25 Feb	40.1 °C	9 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
26 Feb	39.2 °C	7 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
27 Feb	40.3 °C	9 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
28 Feb	40.6 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
1 Mar after	39.4 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 59
2 Mar after	40.5 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 59
3 Mar after	39.6 °C	20 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
4 Mar after	39.8 °C	17 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
5 Mar after	41.4 °C	14 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
6 Mar after	41.1 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
7 Mar after	41.9 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Feb 2022

After · 7 Mar 2022

Before After

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 · 303Every 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

All fires in South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ulang fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 February 2022 to 28 February 2022 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 February 2022 to 25 February 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,317 hectares (53.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ulang (5,009 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 78, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 February 2022 → 28 February 2022.
26 October 2026 Start date: 14 February 2022 → 8 February 2022.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 February 2022 to 25 February 2022. 303 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.

Where it burned