How long did the Yei fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2026 and 18 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 8,276 hectares (82.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yei (8,330 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2026-01-03 → 2026-01-18

Yei fire, 3 January 2026 Yei

Out · last detection 19 Jan 2026, 11:23 UTC

The fire started on 3 January 2026 in Yei, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,276 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 36th largest in Central Equatoria since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 67 in South Sudan in 2026, of 183.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yei · 2026 Yei · 2017 Yei · 2026

Burnt area: 8,276ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 3 Jan 2026 – 18 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 3 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 274; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 140MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jan18 Jan

Play back 19 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

3 Jan 6 Jan 9 Jan 12 Jan 15 Jan 17 Jan 18 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

35°high

42km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,063 ha in 2016, 3,331 ha in 2017, 528 ha in 2019, 943 ha in 2020, 666 ha in 2023, 2,386 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,491 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.2% of the area of London (83 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

Yei where it started

8,330 ha reached on 2 Jan

1.2 %

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 area1.6 ha

Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (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)
3 Jan	34.9 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 Jan	34.2 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Jan	33.7 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Jan	34.4 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Jan	35.4 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
8 Jan	34.8 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Jan	34.7 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
10 Jan	33.9 °C	22 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Jan	32.5 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Jan	33.7 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Jan	34.6 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Jan	34.0 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Jan	33.7 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Jan	33.3 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 Jan	34.0 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
18 Jan	34.8 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Jan after	35.0 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Jan after	35.1 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
21 Jan after	35.4 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Jan after	36.1 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
23 Jan after	36.5 °C	16 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
24 Jan after	36.5 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Jan after	36.4 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
26 Jan after	35.8 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
27 Jan after	34.5 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
28 Jan after	33.0 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Dec 2025

After · 25 Jan 2026

Before After

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 5 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 93 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 56: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak93 µg/m³

Days over the guideline21 days

PM1097 µg/m³

Optical depth1.07

WHO 15

123456789101112131415161718192021

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 · 274Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yei fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2026 and 18 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 8,276 hectares (82.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yei (8,330 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 274 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.

Where it burned