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Wau fire, 12 December 2025 Wau

Out · last detection 20 Dec 2025, 23:23 UTC

The fire started on 12 December 2025 in Wau, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,191 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 400th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 278 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Burnt area
5,191ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
12 Dec 2025 – 22 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
12 Dec
2025
Heat detections
105
in a single hotspot: 199 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Dec 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Dec22 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

121314151617181920

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
36km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,424 ha in 2016, 877 ha in 2017, 368 ha in 2019, 1,061 ha in 2020, 1,311 ha in 2021, 836 ha in 2022, 1,672 ha in 2023, 2,992 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,111 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Wau where it started
    5,228 ha reached on 12 Dec
    0.3 %

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)
12 Dec 33.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Dec 33.4 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Dec 33.0 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Dec 32.7 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Dec 31.1 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Dec 31.7 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Dec 32.0 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Dec 32.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Dec 33.4 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Dec 34.1 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Dec 34.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Dec after 32.5 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Dec after 35.3 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Dec after 35.8 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Dec after 35.4 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Dec after 35.9 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Dec after 33.7 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Dec after 33.5 °C 11 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec after 33.7 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Dec after 32.1 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Jan after 34.2 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Dec 2025
After · 29 Dec 2025

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 18 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10121 µg/m³
Optical depth0.55
10111213141516171819202122232425
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 · 105Every 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 12 December 2025 and 22 December 2025: 11 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 5,191 hectares (51.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Wau (5,228 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.