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Yambio fire, 7 December 2017 Yambio

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2017, 11:31 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2017 in Yambio, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,511 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 73th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 29 in South Sudan in 2017, of 204.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yambio · 2016Yambio · 2018Yambio · 2025Ibba · 2016

Burnt area
15,511ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
7 Dec 2017 – 22 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
7 Dec
2017
Heat detections
559
in a single hotspot: 174 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
618MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec22 Dec
22 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 Dec 2017 · 11 MW · 1 12 Dec 2017 · 37 MW · 19 13 Dec 2017 · 1,677 MW · 56 14 Dec 2017 · 1,031 MW · 49 15 Dec 2017 · 327 MW · 45 16 Dec 2017 · 448 MW · 48 17 Dec 2017 · 2,816 MW · 160 18 Dec 2017 · 581 MW · 113 19 Dec 2017 · 243 MW · 49 20 Dec 2017 · 17 MW · 2 21 Dec 2017 · 209 MW · 15 22 Dec 2017 · 15 MW · 2
7 Dec 13 Dec 15 Dec 17 Dec 19 Dec 21 Dec

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
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,608 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.8% of the area of London (155 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Yambio where it started
    15,624 ha reached on 7 Dec
    1.8 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
7 Dec 34.8 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Dec 35.0 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Dec 35.2 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Dec 36.4 °C 19 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Dec 35.4 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Dec 35.9 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Dec 37.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Dec 37.1 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Dec 35.9 °C 18 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Dec 35.7 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Dec 36.1 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Dec 36.5 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Dec 36.3 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Dec 36.6 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Dec 37.8 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Dec 37.7 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec after 37.5 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Dec after 36.7 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Dec after 36.1 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Dec after 35.5 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Dec after 35.4 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Dec after 36.4 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Dec after 37.7 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Dec after 36.3 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Dec after 36.5 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Jan after 34.0 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Nov 2017
After · 29 Dec 2017

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 · 559Every 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 Yambio fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 December 2017 to 22 December 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 December 2017 to 21 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,511 hectares (155.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yambio (15,624 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 December 2017 → 22 December 2017.
  2. Start date: 13 December 2017 → 7 December 2017.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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 13 December 2017 to 21 December 2017. 559 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.