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Cáceres fire, 28 July 2020 Cáceres

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

The fire started on 28 July 2020 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,802 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1516th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 694 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
3,802ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
28 Jul 2020 – 6 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Jul
2020
Heat detections
248
in a single hotspot: 124 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
426MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul6 Aug
6 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jul 2020 · 222 MW · 15 29 Jul 2020 · 410 MW · 11 30 Jul 2020 · 709 MW · 36 31 Jul 2020 · 724 MW · 37 1 Aug 2020 · 596 MW · 30 2 Aug 2020 · 485 MW · 42 3 Aug 2020 · 348 MW · 21 4 Aug 2020 · 473 MW · 27 5 Aug 2020 · 248 MW · 22 6 Aug 2020 · 48 MW · 7
28 Jul 30 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 3 Aug 5 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
38km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 16 Aug.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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. Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants where it started
    3,356 ha reached on 28 Jul
    0.1 %

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)
28 Jul 33.8 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul 26.0 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul 28.6 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Jul 31.8 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Aug 34.8 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Aug 34.1 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Aug 34.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Aug 35.4 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Aug 34.2 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug 33.7 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Aug after 34.5 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug after 34.7 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Aug after 35.1 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Aug after 35.6 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Aug after 35.9 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug after 32.4 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Aug after 33.8 °C 32 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Aug after 37.3 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Aug after 37.3 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Aug after 32.5 °C 45 % 33 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jul 2020
After · 13 Aug 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 · 248Every 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 28 July 2020 and 6 August 2020: 10 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 3,802 hectares (38.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (3,356 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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.

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. 248 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.