How long did the Caapucu fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 September 2020 and 3 October 2020: 8 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 2,532 hectares (25.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Caapucu (2,054 ha, 0.8 %); Villa Oliva (488 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, class Extreme.

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.

PY · Paraguay · 2020-09-26 → 2020-10-03

Caapucu fire, 26 September 2020 Caapucu, Villa Oliva

Out · last detection 3 Oct 2020, 17:17 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2020 in Caapucu, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,532 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 20th largest in Paraguarí since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 189 in Paraguay in 2020, of 424.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Villa Oliva · 2018 Villa Oliva · 2017 Villa Oliva · 2020 Villa Oliva · 2022

Burnt area: 2,532ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 26 Sept 2020 – 3 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 26 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 111MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 3 Oct 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept3 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

26 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept 2 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

42°high

67km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.0 mm on 8 Oct.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 365 ha in 2017, 980 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,259 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

Caapucu where it started

2,054 ha reached on 26 Sept

0.8 %
Villa Oliva

488 ha reached on 30 Sept

0.3 %

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)
26 Sept	39.8 °C	24 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Sept	31.9 °C	40 %	60 km/h	1.1 mm	High 27
28 Sept	26.4 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 21
29 Sept	35.2 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
30 Sept	40.6 °C	25 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
1 Oct	42.4 °C	19 %	67 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
2 Oct	35.3 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Oct	24.4 °C	57 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
4 Oct after	26.0 °C	50 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
5 Oct after	23.6 °C	49 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
6 Oct after	28.5 °C	42 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
7 Oct after	32.0 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
8 Oct after	32.4 °C	44 %	35 km/h	5.0 mm	Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Sept 2020

After · 10 Oct 2020

Before After

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 · 74Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Paraguay ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Caapucu fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 September 2020 and 3 October 2020: 8 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 2,532 hectares (25.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Caapucu (2,054 ha, 0.8 %); Villa Oliva (488 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, class Extreme.
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.

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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 74 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 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.

Where it burned