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Apuí fire, 4 August 2024 Apuí

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2024, 17:42 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2024 in Apuí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,112 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 418th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 1243 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…
Burnt area
3,112ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
4 Aug 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Aug
2024
Heat detections
182
in a single hotspot: 393 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
504MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug10 Aug
10 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

4 Aug 2024 · 1,135 MW · 4 5 Aug 2024 · 433 MW · 45 6 Aug 2024 · 732 MW · 20 7 Aug 2024 · 666 MW · 35 8 Aug 2024 · 360 MW · 36 9 Aug 2024 · 181 MW · 31 10 Aug 2024 · 18 MW · 10
4 Aug 5 Aug 6 Aug 7 Aug 8 Aug 9 Aug 10 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
39km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 15 Aug.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 942 ha in 2019, 908 ha in 2020, 1,213 ha in 2021, 54 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,581 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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
    3,128 ha reached on 4 Aug
    0.1 %

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.

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)
4 Aug 36.0 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 35.9 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Aug 34.7 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Aug 37.5 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Aug 37.9 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Aug 37.6 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug 33.3 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Aug after 33.9 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Aug after 34.3 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Aug after 34.8 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Aug after 34.7 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
15 Aug after 34.9 °C 44 % 31 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jul 2024
After · 17 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 6 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 300 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 199: 13 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak300 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10428 µg/m³
Optical depth3.74
2345678910111213
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 · 182Every 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 4 August 2024 and 10 August 2024: 7 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 3,112 hectares (31.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apuí (3,128 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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. 182 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.