Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Amarante do Maranhão fire, 18 August 2016 Amarante do Maranhão

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2016, 04:19 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2016 in Amarante do Maranhão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,796 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 60th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 97 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Amarante do Maranhão · 2017Amarante do Maranhão · 2017Amarante do Maranhão · 2017Arame · 2017

Burnt area
9,796ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
18 Aug 2016 – 18 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Aug
2016
Heat detections
1,007
in a single hotspot: 124 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
134MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug18 Sept
18 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 2016 · 24 MW · 5 19 Aug 2016 · 4 MW · 1 20 Aug 2016 · 26 MW · 3 21 Aug 2016 · 36 MW · 11 22 Aug 2016 · 39 MW · 26 23 Aug 2016 · 5 MW · 2 25 Aug 2016 · 3 MW · 1 26 Aug 2016 · 6 MW · 1 27 Aug 2016 · 77 MW · 40 28 Aug 2016 · 74 MW · 32 29 Aug 2016 · 200 MW · 23 30 Aug 2016 · 67 MW · 17 31 Aug 2016 · 44 MW · 20 1 Sept 2016 · 147 MW · 59 2 Sept 2016 · 370 MW · 84 3 Sept 2016 · 649 MW · 100 4 Sept 2016 · 519 MW · 40 5 Sept 2016 · 172 MW · 42 6 Sept 2016 · 268 MW · 96 7 Sept 2016 · 414 MW · 149 8 Sept 2016 · 14 MW · 3 10 Sept 2016 · 80 MW · 12 11 Sept 2016 · 213 MW · 66 12 Sept 2016 · 252 MW · 134 13 Sept 2016 · 69 MW · 16 14 Sept 2016 · 5 MW · 2 15 Sept 2016 · 48 MW · 6 16 Sept 2016 · 40 MW · 8 18 Sept 2016 · 9 MW · 8
18 Aug 23 Aug 29 Aug 3 Sept 8 Sept 14 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high
49km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 23 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.2% of the area of London (98 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. Amarante do Maranhão 37,085 inhabitants where it started
    9,856 ha reached on 18 Aug
    1.3 %

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)
18 Aug 35.4 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Aug 34.4 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Aug 34.3 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Aug 35.0 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug 35.6 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
23 Aug 33.1 °C 51 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm High 27
24 Aug 33.7 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
25 Aug 34.8 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Aug 34.9 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Aug 35.5 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Aug 35.2 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Aug 35.2 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Aug 34.6 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Aug 35.5 °C 41 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Sept 36.5 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
2 Sept 36.4 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Sept 35.2 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Sept 35.3 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Sept 36.1 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Sept 35.8 °C 37 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 34.8 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Sept 34.6 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
9 Sept 35.2 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.5 mm High 28
10 Sept 36.0 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
11 Sept 35.9 °C 34 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 34.9 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
13 Sept 35.3 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm High 34
14 Sept 36.4 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Sept 35.7 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
16 Sept 34.7 °C 46 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
17 Sept 35.7 °C 39 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Sept 34.6 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
19 Sept after 36.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
20 Sept after 34.5 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
21 Sept after 35.1 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
22 Sept after 34.7 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm High 34
23 Sept after 32.5 °C 54 % 36 km/h 2.8 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Aug 2016
After · 25 Sept 2016

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 · 1,007Every 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 Amarante do Maranhão fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 August 2016 to 18 September 2016 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2016 to 14 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,796 hectares (98.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Amarante do Maranhão (9,856 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 August 2016 to 14 September 2016. 1,007 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.