Wau fire, October 2026 Wau
The fire started on 18 October 2026 in Wau, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,026 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 439th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 441 with a page). Number 205 in South Sudan in 2026, of 207.
The power measured by the satellite is low (25.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Wau · 2017Wau · 2017Wau · 2017Wau · 2020
Is it still active?
No detections since 2 Nov 2026, 12:10 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 5,026ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 18 Oct 2026 – 2 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 18 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 53
- in a single hotspot: 26 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 65MW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,897 ha in 2016, 826 ha in 2017, 105 ha in 2020, 1,202 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,608 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 started5,063 ha reached on 18 Oct0.3 %
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Oct | 33.9 °C | 44 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 19 Oct | 36.8 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 20 Oct | 37.9 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 22 |
| 21 Oct | 38.6 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Oct | 39.7 °C | 21 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 23 Oct | 38.7 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 24 Oct | 39.5 °C | 20 % | 25 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 29 |
| 25 Oct | 38.6 °C | 21 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 26 Oct | 38.5 °C | 28 % | 33 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Oct | 36.3 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 29.2 mm | Very low 5 |
| 28 Oct | 36.5 °C | 30 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 29 Oct | 37.2 °C | 25 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 30 Oct | 36.0 °C | 26 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 31 Oct | 36.6 °C | 28 % | 23 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 22 |
| 1 Nov | 37.0 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 25 |
| 2 Nov | 38.2 °C | 25 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 3 Nov after | 40.1 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 30 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 73 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 53Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wau fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2026 to 2 November 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 October 2026 to 30 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,026 hectares (50.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Wau (5,063 ha, 0.3 %).
- Is the Wau fire still active?
- No fire detections since 2 Nov 2026, 12:10 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 31 October 2026.
- Page published (5,026 ha).
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 21 October 2026 to 30 October 2026. 53 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.