Uror fire, 31 January 2020 Uror
The fire started on 31 January 2020 in Uror, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,243 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 281th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 428 with a page). Number 128 in South Sudan in 2020, of 182.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Uror · 2016Uror · 2026Uror · 2017Uror · 2020
- Burnt area
- 6,243ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 31 Jan 2020 – 4 Feb 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 31 Jan
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 141
- in a single hotspot: 106 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 662MW
- 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 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,885 ha in 2016, 2,369 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,557 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Uror where it started6,282 ha reached on 2 Feb0.5 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Feb | 36.4 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 3 Feb | 36.9 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 4 Feb | 36.0 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 5 Feb after | 34.0 °C | 11 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 6 Feb after | 35.6 °C | 29 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 7 Feb after | 37.5 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 8 Feb after | 38.4 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Feb after | 37.3 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 10 Feb after | 36.8 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 11 Feb after | 35.2 °C | 14 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 12 Feb after | 35.1 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 13 Feb after | 36.1 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 14 Feb after | 36.9 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
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.
Detections table · 141Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 17,474 haUror13 January 2026 · 8 days · 11 km away
- 14,719 haUror25 December 2017 · 11 days · 11 km away
- 16,673 haUror12 February 2020 · 3 days · 14 km away
- 16,330 haUror7 December 2016 · 16 days · 17 km away
- 29,488 haUror20 January 2021 · 21 days · 20 km away
- 14,981 haUror2 January 2022 · 8 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Uror fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 January 2020 to 4 February 2020 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 February 2020 to 4 February 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,243 hectares (62.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Uror (6,282 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 2 February 2020 → 31 January 2020.
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 2 February 2020 to 4 February 2020. 141 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.
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.