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Ulang fire, 5 March 2022 Nyirol, Ulang

Out · last detection 4 Apr 2022, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 5 March 2022 in Ulang, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 47,573 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 5 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ulang · 2021Nyirol · 2016Ulang · 2016Ulang · 2017

Burnt area
47,573ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
5 Mar 2022 – 3 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
5 Mar
2022
Heat detections
3,090
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Mar3 Apr
4 Apr 2022

How it evolved, day by day

5 Mar 2022 · 265 MW · 40 6 Mar 2022 · 237 MW · 40 7 Mar 2022 · 1,280 MW · 86 8 Mar 2022 · 556 MW · 39 9 Mar 2022 · 360 MW · 36 10 Mar 2022 · 1,421 MW · 71 11 Mar 2022 · 10 MW · 6 12 Mar 2022 · 134 MW · 14 13 Mar 2022 · 949 MW · 111 14 Mar 2022 · 962 MW · 106 15 Mar 2022 · 966 MW · 207 16 Mar 2022 · 5,282 MW · 425 17 Mar 2022 · 1,132 MW · 168 18 Mar 2022 · 2,647 MW · 170 19 Mar 2022 · 6,336 MW · 331 20 Mar 2022 · 2,535 MW · 206 21 Mar 2022 · 3,018 MW · 190 22 Mar 2022 · 1,997 MW · 156 23 Mar 2022 · 646 MW · 53 24 Mar 2022 · 1,036 MW · 65 25 Mar 2022 · 600 MW · 47 26 Mar 2022 · 1,064 MW · 150 27 Mar 2022 · 771 MW · 105 28 Mar 2022 · 921 MW · 47 29 Mar 2022 · 397 MW · 37 30 Mar 2022 · 420 MW · 23 31 Mar 2022 · 109 MW · 11 1 Apr 2022 · 449 MW · 38 2 Apr 2022 · 529 MW · 61 3 Apr 2022 · 398 MW · 23 4 Apr 2022 · 435 MW · 28
5 Mar 10 Mar 15 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar 25 Mar 30 Mar 4 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
54km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 4 Apr.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19,248 ha in 2016, 18,456 ha in 2017, 10,557 ha in 2018, 32,787 ha in 2019, 3,144 ha in 2020, 16,603 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 40,366 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 30% of the area of London (476 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. Nyirol
    25,877 ha
    3.6 %
  2. Ulang where it started
    22,020 ha
    4.5 %

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≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.08 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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)
5 Mar 42.2 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Mar 41.6 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Mar 42.1 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Mar 42.2 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
9 Mar 41.3 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Mar 41.8 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
11 Mar 41.4 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Mar 40.5 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Mar 40.6 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Mar 40.8 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
15 Mar 40.0 °C 10 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
16 Mar 37.9 °C 9 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
17 Mar 37.8 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
18 Mar 38.2 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
19 Mar 40.0 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
20 Mar 40.5 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
21 Mar 41.4 °C 7 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
22 Mar 42.3 °C 6 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Mar 39.3 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Mar 40.8 °C 12 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
25 Mar 41.3 °C 8 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
26 Mar 40.4 °C 8 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
27 Mar 39.5 °C 7 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
28 Mar 39.3 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
29 Mar 39.9 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Mar 40.9 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
31 Mar 40.7 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Apr 41.3 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
2 Apr 40.7 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
3 Apr 39.9 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 64
4 Apr after 40.0 °C 23 % 48 km/h 1.6 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2022
After · 10 Apr 2022

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 · 0Every 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 5 March 2022 and 3 April 2022: 30 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 47,573 hectares (475.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nyirol (25,877 ha, 3.6 %); Ulang (22,020 ha, 4.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.3 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, 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 · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 April 2022 → 3 April 2022.
  2. Start date: 26 February 2022 → 5 March 2022.
  3. Name: Nyirol → Ulang.
  4. Last day with fire: 3 April 2022 → 10 April 2022.
  5. Start date: 5 March 2022 → 26 February 2022.

RSS Changes to this page

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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. No 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.