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Arame fire, August 2017 Arame, Amarante do Maranhão

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2017, 16:26 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2017 in Arame, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,709 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 61th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 181 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
9,709ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
27 Aug 2017 – 27 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
27 Aug
2017
Heat detections
592
in a single hotspot: 264 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
288MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug27 Sept
28 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 2017 · 13 MW · 2 28 Aug 2017 · 15 MW · 3 30 Aug 2017 · 9 MW · 2 2 Sept 2017 · 61 MW · 5 3 Sept 2017 · 147 MW · 14 4 Sept 2017 · 254 MW · 30 5 Sept 2017 · 123 MW · 24 6 Sept 2017 · 134 MW · 12 8 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 1 9 Sept 2017 · 287 MW · 14 10 Sept 2017 · 1,042 MW · 73 11 Sept 2017 · 985 MW · 89 12 Sept 2017 · 1,396 MW · 113 13 Sept 2017 · 7 MW · 3 14 Sept 2017 · 80 MW · 10 15 Sept 2017 · 603 MW · 42 16 Sept 2017 · 1,788 MW · 58 17 Sept 2017 · 462 MW · 29 18 Sept 2017 · 84 MW · 5 19 Sept 2017 · 54 MW · 7 20 Sept 2017 · 4 MW · 3 21 Sept 2017 · 19 MW · 5 22 Sept 2017 · 38 MW · 4 23 Sept 2017 · 91 MW · 4 25 Sept 2017 · 10 MW · 5 26 Sept 2017 · 235 MW · 22 27 Sept 2017 · 27 MW · 3 28 Sept 2017 · 84 MW · 10
27 Aug 3 Sept 8 Sept 12 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept 25 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

36°high
48km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,763 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (97 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. Arame 25,517 inhabitants where it started
    9,078 ha reached on 27 Aug
    3.0 %
  2. Amarante do Maranhão 37,085 inhabitants
    698 ha reached on 16 Sept
    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)
27 Aug 33.4 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Aug 34.0 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Aug 33.6 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Aug 34.6 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Aug 35.0 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Sept 33.5 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
2 Sept 33.6 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
3 Sept 33.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Sept 33.5 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Sept 33.0 °C 40 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Sept 33.9 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 33.9 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Sept 34.8 °C 39 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Sept 34.1 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Sept 34.8 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Sept 34.3 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 34.8 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Sept 33.4 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Sept 34.6 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Sept 34.4 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept 34.3 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Sept 34.4 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept 34.4 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Sept 35.1 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Sept 34.8 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept 35.0 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Sept 34.9 °C 36 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Sept 34.9 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Sept 34.7 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Sept 33.3 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Sept 35.7 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Sept 35.2 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Sept after 35.8 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Sept after 36.0 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Sept after 34.5 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Oct after 35.3 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Oct after 34.9 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Oct after 35.8 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Oct after 36.2 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
5 Oct after 35.4 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct after 35.8 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Oct after 34.5 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2017
After · 4 Oct 2017

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 · 592Every 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 Arame fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 August 2017 to 27 September 2017 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2017 to 20 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,709 hectares (97.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Arame (9,078 ha, 3.0 %); Amarante do Maranhão (698 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 September 2017 → 27 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 3 September 2017 → 27 August 2017.

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
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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 3 September 2017 to 20 September 2017. 592 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.