Ulang fire, 29 October 2026 Ulang
The fire started on 29 October 2026 in Ulang, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,146 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 190th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 288 with a page). Number 137 in South Sudan in 2026, of 207.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ulang · 2025Ulang · 2022Ulang · 2019Ulang · 2016
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 10:53 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
- 6,146ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 29 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 29 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 84
- in a single hotspot: 106 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 468MW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 266 ha in 2016, 4,715 ha in 2017, 2,490 ha in 2018, 5,229 ha in 2019, 951 ha in 2020, 5,295 ha in 2022, 4,880 ha in 2023, 2,959 ha in 2024, 7,112 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,484 ha that had burned before.
- 5,970 ha Ulang fire, February 2025 32,732 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,295 ha Ulang fire, March 2022 83,713 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,794 ha Ulang fire, January 2019 58,283 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,037 ha Ulang fire, December 2016 129,779 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,656 ha Ulang fire, March 2023 25,875 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,739 ha Ulang fire, February 2024 12,945 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 678 ha Luakpiny/Nasir fire, February 2017 7,219 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 266 ha Ulang fire, January 2016 9,948 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 started6,183 ha reached on 29 Oct1.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Oct | 39.0 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Oct | 36.5 °C | 30 % | 34 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 27 |
| 31 Oct | 38.1 °C | 29 % | 33 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Nov | 36.8 °C | 31 % | 20 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 2 Nov | 38.1 °C | 24 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Nov | 39.4 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 29 |
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 1 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 57 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 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 · 84Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 83,713 haUlang6 March 2022 · 30 days · 10 km away
- 58,283 haUlangJanuary 2019 · 26 days · 16 km away
- 129,779 haUlangDecember 2016 · 49 days · 21 km away
- 63,860 haAkobo24 January 2022 · 37 days · 21 km away
- 35,904 haUlangDecember 2017 · 24 days · 24 km away
- 77,472 haNyirol4 January 2024 · 28 days · 35 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 29 October 2026 to 3 November 2026 (6 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 6,146 hectares (61.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ulang (6,183 ha, 1.3 %).
- Is the Ulang fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 10:53 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
- 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 2 November 2026.
- Area: 5,449 → 6,146 ha.
- Page published (5,449 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. 84 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.