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Wau fire, 1 December 2024 Wau

Out · last detection 10 Dec 2024, 23:49 UTC

The fire started on 1 December 2024 in Wau, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,577 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 229th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 86 in South Sudan in 2024, of 180.

Burnt area
7,577ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
1 Dec 2024 – 9 Dec 2024
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
1 Dec
2024
Heat detections
288
in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Dec 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Dec9 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

2345678910

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
39km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 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: 1,651 ha in 2016, 4,609 ha in 2017, 2,140 ha in 2019, 4,587 ha in 2020, 898 ha in 2021, 87 ha in 2022, 475 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,760 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Wau where it started
    7,635 ha reached on 26 Nov
    0.4 %

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)
1 Dec 34.6 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Dec 35.1 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Dec 35.6 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Dec 35.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Dec 35.3 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Dec 36.0 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Dec 36.5 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Dec 37.5 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Dec 37.3 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Dec after 37.0 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Dec after 36.1 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
12 Dec after 36.4 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Dec after 37.1 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Dec after 35.7 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Dec after 34.9 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Dec after 35.5 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Dec after 36.7 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Dec after 37.2 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Dec after 37.3 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Nov 2024
After · 16 Dec 2024

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 12 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10122 µg/m³
Optical depth0.40
2930123456789101112
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 · 288Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Wau fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 December 2024 and 9 December 2024: 9 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 7,577 hectares (75.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Wau (7,635 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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

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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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.