Wau fire, 19 November 2020 Wau
The fire started on 19 November 2020 in Wau, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,535 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 190th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 74 in South Sudan in 2020, of 190.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Wau · 2016Wau · 2019Wau · 2025Wau · 2025
- Burnt area
- 8,535ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 19 Nov 2020 – 24 Nov 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 19 Nov
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 205
- in a single hotspot: 304 MW
- Danger at start
- 17
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 455MW
- 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 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,395 ha in 2016, 1,444 ha in 2017, 183 ha in 2018, 1,097 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,228 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
-
Wau where it started8,584 ha reached on 19 Nov0.4 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Nov | 34.3 °C | 27 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 20 Nov | 34.6 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 21 Nov | 34.6 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 22 Nov | 34.5 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 23 Nov | 34.8 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 24 Nov | 35.4 °C | 22 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 25 Nov after | 34.9 °C | 25 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 26 Nov after | 35.2 °C | 25 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 27 Nov after | 35.7 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 28 Nov after | 34.9 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 29 Nov after | 34.5 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 30 Nov after | 34.0 °C | 17 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Dec after | 34.9 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 2 Dec after | 34.8 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 3 Dec after | 35.2 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Dec after | 34.8 °C | 17 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
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 · 205Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,699 haWau20 November 2025 · 14 days · 11 km away
- 13,214 haWau4 December 2019 · 6 days · 12 km away
- 77,790 haWau20 November 2025 · 38 days · 17 km away
- 15,232 haWau2 January 2016 · 8 days · 24 km away
- 23,947 haWau8 December 2025 · 13 days · 28 km away
- 35,551 haNagero17 December 2019 · 18 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wau fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 November 2020 and 24 November 2020: 6 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 8,535 hectares (85.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Wau (8,584 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 205 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.