Anta fire, 17 September 2020 Anta
The fire started on 17 September 2020 in Anta, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,196 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 53th largest in Salta since 2016 (of 231 with a page). Number 194 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Anta · 2019Anta · 2019Anta · 2017Anta · 2017
- Burnt area
- 3,196ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 17 Sept 2020 – 29 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- departments
- Started on
- 17 Sept
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 199
- in a single hotspot: 159 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 677MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 713 ha in 2017, 1,756 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,118 ha that had burned before.
- 294 ha Anta fire, October 2019 2,828 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 112 ha Anta fire, September 2019 5,407 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 100 ha Anta fire, November 2017 4,224 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Anta fire, October 2017 1,834 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Anta fire, October 2017 1,929 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Anta where it started3,224 ha reached on 17 Sept0.1 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Sept | 33.5 °C | 11 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Sept | 38.1 °C | 9 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 19 Sept | 27.7 °C | 11 % | 67 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 20 Sept | 26.5 °C | 12 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 21 Sept | 27.3 °C | 12 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 22 Sept | 31.7 °C | 9 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 23 Sept | 35.3 °C | 16 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 24 Sept | 39.2 °C | 22 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 25 Sept | 42.1 °C | 16 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 26 Sept | 42.7 °C | 19 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
| 27 Sept | 31.1 °C | 12 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 84 |
| 28 Sept | 29.9 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 29 Sept | 35.6 °C | 22 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 30 Sept after | 41.9 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 1 Oct after | 37.5 °C | 26 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 2 Oct after | 30.6 °C | 24 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 199Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Anta fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2020 to 29 September 2020 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2020 to 22 September 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,196 hectares (32.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Anta (3,224 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 78, class Very extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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: 911 · 100 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 22 September 2020 → 29 September 2020.
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
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 17 September 2020 to 22 September 2020. 199 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.