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Cáceres fire, 7 July 2020 Cáceres

Out · last detection 12 Jul 2020, 18:15 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2020 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,476 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 661th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 299 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Burnt area
7,476ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
7 Jul 2020 – 11 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Jul
2020
Heat detections
161
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Jul 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul11 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

789101112

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
39km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 310 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants where it started
    7,547 ha reached on 7 Jul
    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)
7 Jul 34.1 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jul 22.0 °C 57 % 39 km/h 0.7 mm High 25
9 Jul 24.9 °C 51 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Jul 32.0 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Jul 33.8 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jul after 34.2 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Jul after 34.6 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Jul after 33.5 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jul after 34.3 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Jul after 36.4 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Jul after 35.4 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jul after 35.9 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Jul after 35.8 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Jul after 34.9 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Jul after 34.3 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Jul after 34.8 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jun 2020
After · 18 Jul 2020

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 · 161Every 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 Cáceres fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 July 2020 and 11 July 2020: 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 7,476 hectares (74.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (7,547 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 39 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

Satellite cross-check

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 193.

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.