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Yambio fire, 2 January 2026 Yambio, Nzara

Out · last detection 18 Jan 2026, 11:43 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2026 in Yambio, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 62,632 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 18th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 4 in South Sudan in 2026, of 184.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yambio · 2018Yambio · 2022Nzara · 2024Nzara · 2019

Burnt area
62,632ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
2 Jan 2026 – 17 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
2 Jan
2026
Heat detections
2,089
in a single hotspot: 147 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
951MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan17 Jan
18 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 2026 · 180 MW · 39 3 Jan 2026 · 590 MW · 73 4 Jan 2026 · 595 MW · 111 5 Jan 2026 · 1,014 MW · 156 6 Jan 2026 · 3,815 MW · 282 7 Jan 2026 · 1,523 MW · 238 8 Jan 2026 · 5,942 MW · 420 9 Jan 2026 · 1,393 MW · 371 10 Jan 2026 · 234 MW · 94 11 Jan 2026 · 118 MW · 35 12 Jan 2026 · 45 MW · 12 13 Jan 2026 · 216 MW · 27 14 Jan 2026 · 247 MW · 40 15 Jan 2026 · 192 MW · 24 16 Jan 2026 · 28 MW · 12 17 Jan 2026 · 24 MW · 5 18 Jan 2026 · 7 MW · 1
2 Jan 5 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 14 Jan 17 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

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 36,096 ha in 2016, 24,570 ha in 2017, 19,632 ha in 2018, 10,137 ha in 2019, 28,201 ha in 2020, 8,980 ha in 2021, 14,134 ha in 2022, 22,098 ha in 2023, 27,171 ha in 2024, 18,374 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 55,390 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 40% of the area of London (626 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
    57,326 ha reached on 27 Dec
    6.5 %
  2. Nzara
    5,782 ha reached on 30 Dec
    0.9 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
2 Jan 36.0 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Jan 35.6 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Jan 36.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Jan 35.7 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Jan 35.5 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Jan 36.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Jan 37.0 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Jan 36.0 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Jan 34.7 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Jan 34.9 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Jan 35.9 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Jan 35.9 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Jan 35.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Jan 34.8 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Jan 34.3 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jan 35.7 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jan after 36.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Jan after 36.1 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Jan after 36.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Jan after 35.6 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Jan after 37.5 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Jan after 37.3 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Jan after 37.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Jan after 38.2 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Jan after 37.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Jan after 36.8 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Dec 2025
After · 24 Jan 2026

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 31 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 161 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 104: 6.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak161 µg/m³
Days over the guideline21 days
PM10172 µg/m³
Optical depth1.22
311234567891011121314151617181920
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 · 2,089Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2026 and 17 January 2026: 16 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 62,632 hectares (626.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Yambio (57,326 ha, 6.5 %); Nzara (5,782 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,089 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 2025, 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.