Ulang fire, 9 February 2025 Ulang, Luakpiny/Nasir
The fire started on 9 February 2025 in Ulang, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 46 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 32,732 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
- 15,857 haNyirol5 January 2025 · 42 days
- 15,488 haAkobo3 February 2025 · 11 days
- 10,468 haAkobo2 February 2025 · 10 days
- 5,668 haUlangMarch 2025 · 14 days
- 5,552 haLuakpiny/NasirMarch 2025 · 23 days
- 5,472 haUlang15 February 2025 · 13 days
- 4,253 haWantawo5 March 2025 · 7 days
- 3,424 haWantawo22 March 2025 · 11 days
It is the 15th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 30 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ulang · 2016Ulang · 2023Ulang · 2024Ulang · 2016
- Burnt area
- 32,732ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 46days
- 9 Feb 2025 – 26 Mar 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 9 Feb
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 2,461
- in a single hotspot: 321 MW
- Danger at start
- 66
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 649MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,965 ha in 2016, 29,232 ha in 2017, 12,820 ha in 2018, 19,833 ha in 2019, 2,019 ha in 2020, 1,400 ha in 2021, 27,777 ha in 2022, 25,164 ha in 2023, 19,061 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 32,854 ha that had burned before.
- 25,246 ha Ulang fire, December 2016 129,779 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10,517 ha Ulang fire, March 2023 25,875 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,570 ha Ulang fire, February 2024 12,945 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,585 ha Ulang fire, January 2016 9,948 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,514 ha Luakpiny/Nasir fire, February 2017 7,219 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,951 ha Ulang fire, February 2024 14,721 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,915 ha Ulang fire, March 2023 5,101 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,309 ha Ulang fire, December 2017 35,904 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
-
Ulang where it started32,918 ha reached on 9 Feb6.8 %
-
14 ha reached on 1 Mar0.0 %
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 2025Inside 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Feb | 39.0 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 10 Feb | 39.6 °C | 12 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 11 Feb | 39.5 °C | 11 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 12 Feb | 37.3 °C | 20 % | 37 km/h | 0.3 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 13 Feb | 39.5 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 14 Feb | 39.2 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 15 Feb | 38.6 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 16 Feb | 39.1 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 17 Feb | 40.4 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 18 Feb | 39.8 °C | 15 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 Feb | 40.1 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 20 Feb | 41.1 °C | 10 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 21 Feb | 41.4 °C | 11 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 22 Feb | 40.6 °C | 10 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 23 Feb | 40.9 °C | 9 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 24 Feb | 40.7 °C | 12 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 25 Feb | 40.2 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 26 Feb | 40.4 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 27 Feb | 40.1 °C | 12 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 28 Feb | 40.8 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 1 Mar | 41.9 °C | 13 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 2 Mar | 40.8 °C | 12 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 3 Mar | 40.0 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 4 Mar | 37.9 °C | 13 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Mar | 40.3 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Mar | 40.9 °C | 10 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 7 Mar | 40.1 °C | 8 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 8 Mar | 39.0 °C | 8 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 9 Mar | 38.9 °C | 7 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 10 Mar | 38.9 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 11 Mar | 39.1 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 12 Mar | 40.1 °C | 9 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 13 Mar | 39.7 °C | 19 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 14 Mar | 40.5 °C | 12 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 15 Mar | 41.9 °C | 7 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 16 Mar | 42.2 °C | 7 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 17 Mar | 40.8 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 18 Mar | 39.7 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 19 Mar | 38.6 °C | 26 % | 39 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 20 Mar | 39.0 °C | 21 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 21 Mar | 38.6 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 1.3 mm | Very high 42 |
| 22 Mar | 37.0 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 23 Mar | 38.3 °C | 7 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 24 Mar | 37.5 °C | 10 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 25 Mar | 39.6 °C | 10 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 26 Mar | 39.7 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 27 Mar after | 40.7 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 28 Mar after | 38.3 °C | 22 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 29 Mar after | 38.0 °C | 26 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 30 Mar after | 40.3 °C | 23 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 31 Mar after | 40.1 °C | 25 % | 48 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 1 Apr after | 38.7 °C | 25 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 2 Apr after | 38.7 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 3 Apr after | 39.4 °C | 24 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 4 Apr after | 39.8 °C | 24 % | 43 km/h | 0.3 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 5 Apr after | 37.4 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 52 |
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 27 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 95 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 67: 4.5 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 · 2,461Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 63,860 haAkobo24 January 2022 · 37 days · 17 km away
- 77,472 haNyirol4 January 2024 · 28 days · 23 km away
- 83,713 haUlang6 March 2022 · 30 days · 26 km away
- 58,283 haUlangJanuary 2019 · 26 days · 29 km away
- 129,779 haUlangDecember 2016 · 49 days · 32 km away
- 35,904 haUlangDecember 2017 · 24 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ulang fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 February 2025 to 26 March 2025 (46 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 February 2025 to 19 March 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 32,732 hectares (327.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ulang (32,918 ha, 6.8 %); Luakpiny/Nasir (14 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 19 March 2025 → 26 March 2025.
- Start date: 16 February 2025 → 9 February 2025.
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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 February 2025 to 19 March 2025. 2,461 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 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.