Almas fire, 27 August 2024 Almas, Natividade
The fire started on 27 August 2024 in Almas, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,838 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 95th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 189 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 15,838ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 27 Aug 2024 – 3 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 27 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 601
- in a single hotspot: 121 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 314MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11,252 ha in 2016, 70 ha in 2017, 27 ha in 2018, 2,003 ha in 2019, 8,351 ha in 2020, 291 ha in 2021, 5,801 ha in 2022, 469 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,216 ha that had burned before.
- 11,232 ha Natividade fire, August 2016 29,347 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,470 ha Almas fire, August 2020 5,244 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,068 ha Almas fire, July 2022 5,773 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,743 ha Almas fire, August 2020 3,372 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 750 ha Natividade fire, July 2019 6,791 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 291 ha Natividade fire, July 2021 3,457 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 27 ha Almas fire, September 2018 5,924 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
-
14,148 ha reached on 26 Aug3.5 %
-
Natividade 8,754 inhabitants1,783 ha reached on 30 Aug0.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 34.5 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 Aug | 34.3 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 Aug | 32.1 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Aug | 30.4 °C | 28 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 30 Aug | 31.1 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 31 Aug | 32.1 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Sept | 32.9 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Sept | 32.6 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 3 Sept | 33.9 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 4 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 5 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 7 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Sept after | 33.1 °C | 19 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 9 Sept after | 32.5 °C | 17 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 10 Sept after | 32.7 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 11 Sept after | 33.4 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 12 Sept after | 33.7 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 13 Sept after | 33.3 °C | 23 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Sept after | 33.3 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 15 Sept after | 34.5 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 17 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 18 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 16 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 20 Sept after | 34.7 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 6 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 601Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 29,347 haNatividade28 August 2016 · 11 days · 7 km away
- 20,131 haAlmas14 September 2026 · 18 days · 8 km away
- 13,658 haAlmas31 August 2020 · 7 days · 17 km away
- 23,594 haAlmasAugust 2022 · 18 days · 22 km away
- 19,099 haNatividade18 September 2019 · 11 days · 24 km away
- 14,775 haNatividadeJuly 2016 · 12 days · 28 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Almas fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2024 and 3 September 2024: 8 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 15,838 hectares (158.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Almas (14,148 ha, 3.5 %); Natividade (1,783 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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
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. 601 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.