How long did the Cáceres fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2019 and 21 August 2019: 14 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 5,309 hectares (53.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cáceres (5,322 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2019-08-08 → 2019-08-21

Cáceres fire, 8 August 2019 Cáceres

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2019, 16:49 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2019 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,309 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1006th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 433 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2024 Cáceres · 2021 Cáceres · 2019 Cáceres · 2020

Burnt area: 5,309ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 8 Aug 2019 – 21 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 8 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 217; in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 58MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug21 Aug

Play back 21 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

8 Aug 10 Aug 12 Aug 14 Aug 16 Aug 18 Aug 20 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

36°high

45km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.1 mm on 27 Aug.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 903 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 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

Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants where it started

5,322 ha reached on 8 Aug

0.2 %

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)
5 Aug	27.3 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Aug	31.9 °C	40 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
7 Aug	33.5 °C	39 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Aug	34.1 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
9 Aug	33.6 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
10 Aug	29.1 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Aug	33.9 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Aug	35.3 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Aug	29.9 °C	47 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
14 Aug	24.7 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Aug	30.9 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Aug	34.7 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Aug	35.9 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
18 Aug	34.2 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
19 Aug	29.0 °C	54 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Aug	29.8 °C	46 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
21 Aug	33.5 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
22 Aug after	35.7 °C	39 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
23 Aug after	33.4 °C	41 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
24 Aug after	35.7 °C	31 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Aug after	35.9 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Aug after	34.5 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.6 mm	High 26
27 Aug after	26.2 °C	64 %	28 km/h	7.1 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Aug 2019

After · 28 Aug 2019

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 · 217Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cáceres fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2019 and 21 August 2019: 14 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 5,309 hectares (53.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cáceres (5,322 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

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.

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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 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. 217 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.

Where it burned