How long did the Amarante do Maranhão fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 October 2017 and 25 October 2017: 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 6,774 hectares (67.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Amarante do Maranhão (6,522 ha, 0.9 %); Arame (296 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2017-10-18 → 2017-10-25

Amarante do Maranhão fire, 18 October 2017 Amarante do Maranhão, Arame

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2017, 16:39 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2017 in Amarante do Maranhão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,774 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 144th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 295 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 6,774ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 18 Oct 2017 – 25 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 18 Oct; 2017
Heat detections: 372; in a single hotspot: 150 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 558MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct25 Oct

Play back 24 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 21 Oct 22 Oct 23 Oct 24 Oct

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

50km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 30 Oct.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,020 ha in 2016.

5,955 ha Amarante do Maranhão fire, July 2016 29,518 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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

Amarante do Maranhão 37,085 inhabitants where it started

6,522 ha reached on 18 Oct

0.9 %
Arame 25,517 inhabitants

296 ha reached on 19 Oct

0.1 %

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)
18 Oct	35.2 °C	42 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
19 Oct	35.6 °C	43 %	50 km/h	0.4 mm	High 28
20 Oct	36.9 °C	37 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Oct	35.8 °C	36 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Oct	36.6 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Oct	35.8 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Oct	35.8 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Oct	35.8 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
26 Oct after	36.3 °C	43 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 Oct after	33.4 °C	50 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
28 Oct after	34.2 °C	43 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
29 Oct after	35.0 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
30 Oct after	31.1 °C	58 %	32 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Oct 2017

After · 1 Nov 2017

Before After

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 · 372Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Amarante do Maranhão fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 October 2017 and 25 October 2017: 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 6,774 hectares (67.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Amarante do Maranhão (6,522 ha, 0.9 %); Arame (296 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 372 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.

Where it burned