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Nossa Senhora do Livramento fire, September 2017 Barão de Melgaço, Nossa Senhora do Livramento

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2017, 16:55 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2017 in Nossa Senhora do Livramento, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,206 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 293th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 106 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barão de Melgaço · 2019Barão de Melgaço · 2024Barão de Melgaço · 2023Poconé · 2020

Burnt area
14,206ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
1 Sept 2017 – 20 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
1 Sept
2017
Heat detections
715
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
825MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept20 Sept
21 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2017 · 49 MW · 4 2 Sept 2017 · 1,816 MW · 54 3 Sept 2017 · 1,836 MW · 60 4 Sept 2017 · 1,238 MW · 57 5 Sept 2017 · 1,242 MW · 58 6 Sept 2017 · 576 MW · 43 7 Sept 2017 · 1,773 MW · 88 8 Sept 2017 · 2,319 MW · 36 9 Sept 2017 · 1,062 MW · 41 10 Sept 2017 · 650 MW · 30 11 Sept 2017 · 121 MW · 17 12 Sept 2017 · 666 MW · 20 13 Sept 2017 · 491 MW · 39 14 Sept 2017 · 1,274 MW · 60 15 Sept 2017 · 1,072 MW · 38 16 Sept 2017 · 22 MW · 8 17 Sept 2017 · 15 MW · 2 18 Sept 2017 · 115 MW · 8 19 Sept 2017 · 601 MW · 29 20 Sept 2017 · 359 MW · 20 21 Sept 2017 · 26 MW · 3
1 Sept 4 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 19 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

39°high
45km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 27 Sept.

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 9% of the area of London (142 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. Barão de Melgaço 15,246 inhabitants
    10,404 ha
    0.9 %
  2. Nossa Senhora do Livramento where it started
    3,875 ha
    0.7 %

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 area0.17 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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)
1 Sept 38.2 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
2 Sept 38.4 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept 38.5 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Sept 37.6 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Sept 37.3 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 35.4 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Sept 37.6 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Sept 38.8 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Sept 39.0 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Sept 39.0 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Sept 35.7 °C 45 % 34 km/h 3.0 mm Low 10
12 Sept 37.2 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Sept 38.6 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Sept 38.5 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Sept 39.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Sept 29.4 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Sept 30.1 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Sept 37.1 °C 29 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Sept 38.7 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Sept 38.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept after 38.6 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Sept after 37.3 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Sept after 37.0 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Sept after 37.1 °C 36 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Sept after 39.8 °C 29 % 15 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
26 Sept after 36.2 °C 35 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Sept after 35.5 °C 40 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2017
After · 27 Sept 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 · 0Every 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 Nossa Senhora do Livramento fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2017 and 20 September 2017: 20 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 14,206 hectares (142.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Barão de Melgaço (10,404 ha, 0.9 %); Nossa Senhora do Livramento (3,875 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 26 September 2017 → 20 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 25 August 2017 → 1 September 2017.
  3. Name: Barão de Melgaço → Nossa Senhora do Livramento.
  4. Last day with fire: 20 September 2017 → 26 September 2017.
  5. Start date: 1 September 2017 → 25 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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 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.