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Um Dafoug fire, 8 January 2023 Um Dafoug

Out · last detection 24 Jan 2023, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 8 January 2023 in Um Dafoug, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,968 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 140th largest in South Darfur since 2016 (of 337 with a page). Number 31 in Sudan in 2023, of 95.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Um Dafoug · 2020Um Dafoug · 2021Um Dafoug · 2026Um Dafoug · 2026

Burnt area
2,968ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
8 Jan 2023 – 24 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
localities
Started on
8 Jan
2023
Heat detections
123
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
45MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jan24 Jan
24 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jan 2023 · 11 MW · 2 10 Jan 2023 · 7 MW · 4 11 Jan 2023 · 15 MW · 7 12 Jan 2023 · 52 MW · 12 13 Jan 2023 · 24 MW · 7 14 Jan 2023 · 15 MW · 4 15 Jan 2023 · 52 MW · 11 16 Jan 2023 · 307 MW · 30 17 Jan 2023 · 46 MW · 26 18 Jan 2023 · 1 MW · 1 19 Jan 2023 · 39 MW · 6 20 Jan 2023 · 16 MW · 2 21 Jan 2023 · 6 MW · 1 22 Jan 2023 · 52 MW · 5 23 Jan 2023 · 65 MW · 3 24 Jan 2023 · 6 MW · 2
8 Jan 12 Jan 15 Jan 16 Jan 18 Jan 21 Jan 24 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
44km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 748 ha in 2019, 358 ha in 2020, 11 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Um Dafoug where it started
    2,986 ha reached on 8 Jan
    0.6 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
8 Jan 32.4 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Jan 32.4 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Jan 31.2 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
11 Jan 31.6 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
12 Jan 32.0 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Jan 32.4 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
14 Jan 33.2 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Jan 33.0 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
16 Jan 33.5 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Jan 32.8 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Jan 33.8 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
19 Jan 35.1 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Jan 36.2 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Jan 36.0 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
22 Jan 36.2 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
23 Jan 35.3 °C 6 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
24 Jan 35.0 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
25 Jan after 35.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
26 Jan after 36.5 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
27 Jan after 36.8 °C 6 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
28 Jan after 37.3 °C 7 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
29 Jan after 38.2 °C 6 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jan 2023
After · 31 Jan 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 6 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1098 µg/m³
Optical depth0.58
678910111213141516171819202122
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 123Every 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 Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Um Dafoug fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 January 2023 to 24 January 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 January 2023 to 19 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,968 hectares (29.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Um Dafoug (2,986 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 January 2023 → 24 January 2023.

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 8 January 2023 to 19 January 2023. 123 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.

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.