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Yambio fire, 13 January 2020 Yambio

Out · last detection 26 Jan 2020, 23:23 UTC

The fire started on 13 January 2020 in Yambio, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,469 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 228th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 359 with a page). Number 126 in South Sudan in 2020, of 190.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yambio · 2016Yambio · 2017Yambio · 2026Nzara · 2024

Burnt area
6,469ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
13 Jan 2020 – 25 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
13 Jan
2020
Heat detections
188
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jan25 Jan
26 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jan 2020 · 13 MW · 1 15 Jan 2020 · 156 MW · 13 16 Jan 2020 · 1 MW · 1 18 Jan 2020 · 6 MW · 1 19 Jan 2020 · 1 MW · 1 20 Jan 2020 · 267 MW · 40 21 Jan 2020 · 558 MW · 43 22 Jan 2020 · 307 MW · 69 23 Jan 2020 · 92 MW · 10 24 Jan 2020 · 9 MW · 2 25 Jan 2020 · 26 MW · 4 26 Jan 2020 · 2 MW · 3
14 Jan 16 Jan 19 Jan 21 Jan 23 Jan 25 Jan

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
38km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,844 ha in 2016, 2,429 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,248 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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
    6,519 ha reached on 14 Jan
    0.7 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
19 Jan 33.6 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jan 33.5 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Jan 33.3 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Jan 33.0 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Jan 32.2 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Jan 32.5 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Jan 33.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Jan after 33.7 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Jan after 34.8 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Jan after 36.0 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Jan after 36.1 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Jan after 35.7 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Jan after 34.5 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Feb after 33.7 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Feb after 36.1 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Feb after 36.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Feb after 35.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jan 2020
After · 1 Feb 2020

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 · 188Every 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 13 January 2020 to 25 January 2020 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2020 to 25 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,469 hectares (64.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yambio (6,519 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 19 January 2020 → 13 January 2020.

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 19 January 2020 to 25 January 2020. 188 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 2020, 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.