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Apiacás fire, 16 August 2020 Apiacás

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2020, 05:30 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2020 in Apiacás, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 36 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,152 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 225th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 93 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Apiacás · 2019Apiacás · 2019Paranaíta · 2024Paranaíta · 2020

Burnt area
17,152ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
36days
16 Aug 2020 – 20 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Aug
2020
Heat detections
1,565
in a single hotspot: 352 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
533MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug20 Sept
20 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

17 Aug 2020 · 9 MW · 2 18 Aug 2020 · 666 MW · 12 19 Aug 2020 · 412 MW · 68 20 Aug 2020 · 59 MW · 30 21 Aug 2020 · 82 MW · 21 22 Aug 2020 · 3 MW · 1 23 Aug 2020 · 1,400 MW · 35 24 Aug 2020 · 2,381 MW · 106 25 Aug 2020 · 330 MW · 66 26 Aug 2020 · 184 MW · 28 27 Aug 2020 · 19 MW · 6 28 Aug 2020 · 11 MW · 1 29 Aug 2020 · 383 MW · 16 30 Aug 2020 · 90 MW · 16 31 Aug 2020 · 286 MW · 26 1 Sept 2020 · 69 MW · 26 2 Sept 2020 · 240 MW · 21 3 Sept 2020 · 232 MW · 38 4 Sept 2020 · 952 MW · 44 5 Sept 2020 · 2,912 MW · 150 6 Sept 2020 · 1,677 MW · 167 7 Sept 2020 · 1,415 MW · 92 8 Sept 2020 · 946 MW · 77 9 Sept 2020 · 1,582 MW · 106 10 Sept 2020 · 136 MW · 39 11 Sept 2020 · 153 MW · 53 12 Sept 2020 · 480 MW · 31 13 Sept 2020 · 183 MW · 28 14 Sept 2020 · 213 MW · 33 15 Sept 2020 · 115 MW · 55 16 Sept 2020 · 727 MW · 99 17 Sept 2020 · 154 MW · 49 18 Sept 2020 · 37 MW · 1 19 Sept 2020 · 92 MW · 15 20 Sept 2020 · 13 MW · 7
17 Aug 22 Aug 27 Aug 1 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 11 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

38°high
41km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 958 ha in 2016, 1,930 ha in 2017, 2,252 ha in 2018, 8,632 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,045 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (172 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. Apiacás 8,590 inhabitants where it started
    17,294 ha reached on 17 Aug
    0.8 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.68 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.68 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
16 Aug 36.6 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Aug 36.6 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Aug 36.9 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Aug 35.6 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Aug 35.8 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Aug 27.8 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Aug 29.5 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Aug 32.7 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Aug 35.3 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Aug 32.9 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Aug 34.7 °C 42 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Aug 35.7 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Aug 34.2 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Aug 33.7 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Aug 34.0 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Aug 36.7 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Sept 36.0 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Sept 35.9 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Sept 35.3 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Sept 34.6 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Sept 36.0 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept 37.8 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept 36.3 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept 36.7 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 35.8 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Sept 35.5 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 33.8 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Sept 35.2 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept 36.6 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Sept 35.0 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Sept 36.1 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Sept 35.6 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Sept 33.5 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Sept 33.9 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Sept 35.0 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Sept 33.4 °C 45 % 31 km/h 3.4 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Aug 2020
After · 27 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 · 1,565Every 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 Apiacás fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 August 2020 to 20 September 2020 (36 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 August 2020 to 19 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,152 hectares (171.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apiacás (17,294 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 23 August 2020 to 19 September 2020. 1,565 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.

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.