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Amarante do Maranhão fire, August 2020 Amarante do Maranhão

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2020, 17:22 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2020 in Amarante do Maranhão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,223 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 221th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 488 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
5,223ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
29 Aug 2020 – 17 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Aug
2020
Heat detections
191
in a single hotspot: 147 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
187MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug17 Sept
17 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2020 · 4 MW · 1 1 Sept 2020 · 469 MW · 10 2 Sept 2020 · 34 MW · 4 3 Sept 2020 · 39 MW · 4 5 Sept 2020 · 2 MW · 1 6 Sept 2020 · 19 MW · 5 7 Sept 2020 · 13 MW · 3 8 Sept 2020 · 199 MW · 21 9 Sept 2020 · 296 MW · 14 10 Sept 2020 · 21 MW · 4 11 Sept 2020 · 15 MW · 3 12 Sept 2020 · 73 MW · 6 13 Sept 2020 · 333 MW · 19 14 Sept 2020 · 44 MW · 5 15 Sept 2020 · 1,491 MW · 56 16 Sept 2020 · 100 MW · 23 17 Sept 2020 · 26 MW · 12
29 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 16 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
47km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,787 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,452 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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
    5,258 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.7 %

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 33.7 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Aug 35.3 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Aug 35.0 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Sept 34.7 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 34.6 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Sept 34.0 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept 34.3 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Sept 35.0 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Sept 34.4 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Sept 33.8 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Sept 34.6 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Sept 34.8 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept 35.0 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 34.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Sept 35.4 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Sept 34.3 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Sept 34.6 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept 34.8 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 34.2 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 35.2 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept after 34.5 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept after 34.5 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Sept after 33.8 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Sept after 33.8 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Sept after 33.5 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Sept after 35.1 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Sept after 35.1 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept after 32.8 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
26 Sept after 33.9 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
27 Sept after 34.3 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2020
After · 24 Sept 2020

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 · 191Every 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 29 August 2020 and 17 September 2020: 20 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 5,223 hectares (52.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Amarante do Maranhão (5,258 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 191 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.