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Amarante do Maranhão fire, 5 September 2017 Amarante do Maranhão

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2017, 16:45 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2017 in Amarante do Maranhão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,844 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 37 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Amarante do Maranhão · 2016Amarante do Maranhão · 2016Amarante do Maranhão · 2017Amarante do Maranhão · 2017

Burnt area
30,844ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
5 Sept 2017 – 26 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Sept
2017
Heat detections
1,530
in a single hotspot: 404 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept26 Sept
27 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 2017 · 32 MW · 12 6 Sept 2017 · 667 MW · 46 7 Sept 2017 · 24 MW · 8 8 Sept 2017 · 88 MW · 17 9 Sept 2017 · 353 MW · 34 10 Sept 2017 · 872 MW · 86 11 Sept 2017 · 2,737 MW · 86 12 Sept 2017 · 6,729 MW · 199 13 Sept 2017 · 307 MW · 49 14 Sept 2017 · 555 MW · 41 15 Sept 2017 · 1,919 MW · 116 16 Sept 2017 · 4,551 MW · 209 17 Sept 2017 · 3,612 MW · 221 18 Sept 2017 · 1,120 MW · 82 19 Sept 2017 · 568 MW · 56 20 Sept 2017 · 145 MW · 43 21 Sept 2017 · 313 MW · 59 22 Sept 2017 · 341 MW · 30 23 Sept 2017 · 35 MW · 6 24 Sept 2017 · 56 MW · 7 25 Sept 2017 · 17 MW · 2 26 Sept 2017 · 61 MW · 11 27 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 1
5 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 Sept 25 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

35°high
55km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 9 Oct.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,974 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (308 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
    31,054 ha reached on 30 Aug
    4.2 %

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.

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)
29 Aug 33.0 °C 35 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
30 Aug 33.7 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
31 Aug 34.1 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Sept 32.2 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
2 Sept 33.9 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
3 Sept 34.2 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept 33.5 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Sept 32.6 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Sept 33.5 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept 32.7 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
8 Sept 33.3 °C 37 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept 34.3 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Sept 34.8 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 34.8 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Sept 34.8 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 33.9 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept 34.9 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Sept 35.0 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Sept 35.3 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 34.7 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Sept 34.3 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept 35.4 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept 34.7 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Sept 35.1 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Sept 34.5 °C 31 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Sept 34.0 °C 34 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept 35.2 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Sept 33.0 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm High 33
26 Sept 34.8 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Sept after 34.6 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
28 Sept after 34.7 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Sept after 34.4 °C 36 % 49 km/h 0.6 mm High 35
30 Sept after 33.7 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
1 Oct after 34.9 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Oct after 33.8 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Oct after 34.1 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
4 Oct after 33.9 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
5 Oct after 34.7 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.6 mm High 38
6 Oct after 34.7 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Oct after 33.4 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
8 Oct after 32.9 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm High 28
9 Oct after 32.7 °C 44 % 32 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2017
After · 3 Oct 2017

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 · 1,530Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2017 and 26 September 2017: 22 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 30,844 hectares (308.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Amarante do Maranhão (31,054 ha, 4.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,530 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.