Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Amapá fire, October 2018 Amapá

Out · last detection 6 Nov 2018, 16:53 UTC

The fire started on 19 October 2018 in Amapá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,788 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Amapá since 2016 (of 41 with a page). Number 106 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Amapá · 2024Pracuúba · 2016Pracuúba · 2023Pracuúba · 2016

Burnt area
4,788ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
19 Oct 2018 – 5 Nov 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
19 Oct
2018
Heat detections
240
in a single hotspot: 206 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
135MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Oct5 Nov
6 Nov 2018

How it evolved, day by day

19 Oct 2018 · 4 MW · 1 20 Oct 2018 · 46 MW · 3 21 Oct 2018 · 369 MW · 37 22 Oct 2018 · 444 MW · 16 23 Oct 2018 · 133 MW · 14 24 Oct 2018 · 112 MW · 10 25 Oct 2018 · 164 MW · 27 26 Oct 2018 · 87 MW · 12 27 Oct 2018 · 73 MW · 5 28 Oct 2018 · 20 MW · 3 29 Oct 2018 · 9 MW · 1 30 Oct 2018 · 215 MW · 24 31 Oct 2018 · 140 MW · 16 1 Nov 2018 · 303 MW · 17 2 Nov 2018 · 330 MW · 11 3 Nov 2018 · 32 MW · 9 4 Nov 2018 · 11 MW · 4 5 Nov 2018 · 6 MW · 4 6 Nov 2018 · 58 MW · 7
19 Oct 22 Oct 25 Oct 28 Oct 31 Oct 3 Nov 6 Nov

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
46km/h · peak gust
44%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 14 Nov.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 912 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 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. Amapá where it started
    4,821 ha reached on 19 Oct
    0.6 %

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)
19 Oct 34.5 °C 48 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Oct 34.7 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
21 Oct 33.6 °C 51 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
22 Oct 33.7 °C 49 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Oct 34.1 °C 44 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Oct 33.8 °C 51 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
25 Oct 33.4 °C 53 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
26 Oct 33.4 °C 57 % 40 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 14
27 Oct 34.5 °C 50 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
28 Oct 34.4 °C 55 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 14
29 Oct 33.2 °C 61 % 33 km/h 1.4 mm Low 10
30 Oct 33.6 °C 55 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
31 Oct 34.5 °C 52 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
1 Nov 33.2 °C 54 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Nov 32.8 °C 55 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
3 Nov 33.6 °C 54 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
4 Nov 33.4 °C 57 % 35 km/h 2.8 mm Low 7
5 Nov 34.7 °C 53 % 34 km/h 3.2 mm Low 5
6 Nov after 33.2 °C 58 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
7 Nov after 33.7 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
8 Nov after 31.8 °C 67 % 46 km/h 2.1 mm Low 6
9 Nov after 33.8 °C 50 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
10 Nov after 34.2 °C 52 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
11 Nov after 33.3 °C 53 % 34 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 13
12 Nov after 34.3 °C 52 % 42 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 16
13 Nov after 33.8 °C 54 % 38 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
14 Nov after 33.2 °C 60 % 43 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Oct 2018
After · 12 Nov 2018

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 · 240Every 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 Amapá fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 October 2018 and 5 November 2018: 18 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 4,788 hectares (47.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Amapá (4,821 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.

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.

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. 240 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.

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.