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PY · Paraguay · –

Bahía Negra fire, 21 January 2016 Bahía Negra

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2016, 17:39 UTC

The fire started on 21 January 2016 in Bahía Negra, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,674 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 313th largest in ALTO PARAGUAY since 2016 (of 385 with a page). Number 96 in Paraguay in 2016, of 124.

Burnt area
1,674ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
21 Jan 2016 – 25 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
21 Jan
2016
Heat detections
88
in a single hotspot: 207 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
802MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jan25 Jan
25 Jan 2016

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jan 2016 · 8 MW · 1 22 Jan 2016 · 22 MW · 4 23 Jan 2016 · 431 MW · 19 24 Jan 2016 · 3,484 MW · 52 25 Jan 2016 · 64 MW · 12
21 Jan 22 Jan 23 Jan 24 Jan 25 Jan

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

40°high
62km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.9 mm on 26 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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. Bahía Negra where it started
    1,683 ha reached on 21 Jan
    0.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
21 Jan 37.3 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
22 Jan 37.0 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
23 Jan 38.4 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
24 Jan 40.0 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Jan 39.2 °C 38 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Jan after 40.1 °C 34 % 54 km/h 16.9 mm Low 7

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 10.2, a minimum humidity of 31% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.

FWI at the start 10.2
Minimum humidity 31 %
Days without rain 4
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Carmelo Peralta fire, November 2017
2,627 ha 4 days FWI 9.4 Min. humidity 31 % 210 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.6 mm on 17 Nov.

What happened to them

5 days
median duration
2,628 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
5.2 mm
rain at the end (median; 15 of 16 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 1,674 ha against a median of 2,628 ha. It lasted 5 days, against 5 days.

In 1 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.2 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

16.9 mmfirst rain
26 Janthe day after it ended
62km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 25 Jan, and on 26 Jan 16.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 16, with a median of 5.2 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jan 2016
After · 1 Feb 2016

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 · 88Every 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 Paraguay

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bahía Negra fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 January 2016 and 25 January 2016: 5 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 1,674 hectares (16.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bahía Negra (1,683 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 16. Their median duration was 5 days and their median area 2,628 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 1 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.2 mm.

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: 132 · 911 · 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.

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 132 · 911.

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. 88 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 2015, 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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.