Skip to content
worldfires
BR · Brazil · →

Almas fire, September 2022 Almas

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2022, 05:12 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2022 in Almas, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,902 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 848th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 436 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Burnt area
3,902ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
5 Sept 2022 – 11 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Sept
2022
Heat detections
86
in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
777MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept11 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

567891011

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
43km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,865 ha in 2016, 86 ha in 2017, 127 ha in 2019, 3,176 ha in 2020, 121 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,517 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Almas 6,499 inhabitants where it started
    3,926 ha reached on 5 Sept
    1.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
5 Sept 35.7 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Sept 34.9 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Sept 34.0 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Sept 33.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept 35.1 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept 36.0 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 36.8 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Sept after 36.7 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept after 36.9 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept after 36.7 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept after 37.9 °C 19 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Sept after 37.1 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Sept after 35.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Sept after 34.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept after 34.4 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept after 35.4 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Sept after 34.7 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2022
After · 18 Sept 2022

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 11 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1075 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
34567891011121314
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 · 86Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Almas fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2022 and 11 September 2022: 7 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 3,902 hectares (39.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Almas (3,926 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Brazil (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.

Emergency number: 193

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 193.

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.