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Apuí fire, 18 July 2024 Apuí

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2024, 16:51 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2024 in Apuí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,287 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 384th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 1153 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…
Burnt area
3,287ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
18 Jul 2024 – 1 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Jul
2024
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 139 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
113MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul1 Aug
2 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2024 · 42 MW · 5 19 Jul 2024 · 25 MW · 7 20 Jul 2024 · 117 MW · 8 21 Jul 2024 · 144 MW · 13 22 Jul 2024 · 55 MW · 12 23 Jul 2024 · 392 MW · 15 24 Jul 2024 · 55 MW · 14 29 Jul 2024 · 72 MW · 9 30 Jul 2024 · 270 MW · 20 31 Jul 2024 · 67 MW · 10 1 Aug 2024 · 92 MW · 7 2 Aug 2024 · 24 MW · 10
18 Jul 20 Jul 22 Jul 23 Jul 24 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug

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
32km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 15 Aug.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 235 ha in 2020, 1,849 ha in 2021, 3,062 ha in 2022, 3,476 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,273 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Apuí 20,647 inhabitants where it started
    3,306 ha reached on 17 Jul
    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)
17 Jul 34.9 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Jul 35.6 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jul 36.0 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jul 36.4 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul 36.4 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jul 35.8 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Jul 35.8 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Jul 36.0 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jul 35.7 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jul 35.8 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Jul 34.9 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jul 36.0 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jul 37.0 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Jul 37.2 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Jul 37.0 °C 28 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Aug 36.8 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Aug after 36.0 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug after 35.2 °C 38 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Aug after 36.6 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug after 36.4 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Aug after 35.8 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Aug after 37.6 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Aug after 38.0 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Aug after 38.0 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug after 32.9 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Aug after 34.1 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Aug after 34.6 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Aug after 35.4 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Aug after 35.3 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Aug after 35.1 °C 43 % 28 km/h 4.3 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2024
After · 8 Aug 2024

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 25 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 644 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 371: 25 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak644 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10922 µg/m³
Optical depth3.07
161718192021222324252627282930311234
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 227Every 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 Apuí fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2024 and 1 August 2024: 15 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 3,287 hectares (32.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apuí (3,306 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

Satellite cross-check

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. 227 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.