Yambio fire, January 2023 Yambio
The fire started on 3 January 2023 in Yambio, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,262 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 247th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 71 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Yambio · 2016Yambio · 2017Yambio · 2020Yambio · 2018
- Burnt area
- 6,262ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 3 Jan 2023 – 8 Jan 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 3 Jan
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 202
- in a single hotspot: 92 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 259MW
- 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 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,797 ha in 2016, 2,388 ha in 2017, 2,683 ha in 2018, 92 ha in 2019, 3,727 ha in 2020, 70 ha in 2021, 1,262 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,001 ha that had burned before.
- 3,752 ha Yambio fire, December 2016 135,559 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,010 ha Yambio fire, December 2017 10,152 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,039 ha Yambio fire, January 2020 10,964 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,019 ha Yambio fire, January 2018 5,622 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 785 ha Yambio fire, December 2018 69,706 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 92 ha Yambio fire, December 2019 13,443 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 11 ha Yambio fire, December 2018 8,993 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Yambio where it started6,309 ha reached on 3 Jan0.7 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jan | 34.9 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Jan | 35.4 °C | 22 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Jan | 34.9 °C | 21 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Jan | 35.7 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Jan | 34.8 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 8 Jan | 34.4 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 Jan after | 36.4 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 10 Jan after | 33.3 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 11 Jan after | 33.3 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 12 Jan after | 34.4 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 13 Jan after | 33.7 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 14 Jan after | 35.1 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 15 Jan after | 35.5 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Jan after | 36.4 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 17 Jan after | 36.3 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Jan after | 36.7 °C | 16 % | 35 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.
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 · 202Every 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 Yambio fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2023 and 8 January 2023: 6 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 6,262 hectares (62.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Yambio (6,309 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 43 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
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 202 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.
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.