How long did the Cáceres fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 July 2020 to 6 August 2020 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 July 2020 to 4 August 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,438 hectares (104.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cáceres (10,539 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2020-07-24 → 2020-08-06

Cáceres fire, 24 July 2020 Cáceres

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2020, 17:07 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2020 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,438 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 450th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 190 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 10,438ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 24 Jul 2020 – 6 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 24 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 650; in a single hotspot: 317 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 899MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul6 Aug

Play back 6 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 27 Jul 29 Jul 31 Jul 2 Aug 4 Aug 6 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

55km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 16 Aug.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,702 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,550 ha that had burned before.

2,356 ha Cáceres fire, September 2019 16,369 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (104 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

10,539 ha reached on 25 Jul

0.4 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
24 Jul	35.0 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Jul	24.8 °C	41 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Jul	29.0 °C	37 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Jul	34.6 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 Jul	34.4 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Jul	26.9 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Jul	29.2 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
31 Jul	32.3 °C	36 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Aug	35.7 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Aug	35.0 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Aug	35.0 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Aug	36.1 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Aug	35.0 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
6 Aug	34.5 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
7 Aug after	35.2 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
8 Aug after	35.3 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
9 Aug after	35.7 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
10 Aug after	36.3 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
11 Aug after	36.8 °C	22 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
12 Aug after	33.5 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
13 Aug after	34.6 °C	30 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Aug after	38.2 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
15 Aug after	38.5 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
16 Aug after	33.5 °C	40 %	34 km/h	2.0 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Jul 2020

After · 13 Aug 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 · 650Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 July 2020 to 6 August 2020 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 July 2020 to 4 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,438 hectares (104.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cáceres (10,539 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 July 2020 to 4 August 2020. 650 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned