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Cáceres fire, 29 August 2020 Cáceres

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2020, 05:19 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2020 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,552 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 174th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 71 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2017Cáceres · 2019Cáceres · 2020Cáceres · 2021

Burnt area
21,552ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
29 Aug 2020 – 26 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Aug
2020
Heat detections
822
in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
168MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug26 Sept
26 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2020 · 9 MW · 2 30 Aug 2020 · 50 MW · 9 31 Aug 2020 · 158 MW · 26 1 Sept 2020 · 8 MW · 4 2 Sept 2020 · 41 MW · 14 3 Sept 2020 · 192 MW · 35 4 Sept 2020 · 81 MW · 20 5 Sept 2020 · 458 MW · 59 6 Sept 2020 · 272 MW · 39 7 Sept 2020 · 116 MW · 29 8 Sept 2020 · 206 MW · 46 9 Sept 2020 · 199 MW · 36 10 Sept 2020 · 151 MW · 42 11 Sept 2020 · 747 MW · 81 12 Sept 2020 · 455 MW · 73 13 Sept 2020 · 252 MW · 29 14 Sept 2020 · 358 MW · 64 15 Sept 2020 · 75 MW · 35 16 Sept 2020 · 281 MW · 46 17 Sept 2020 · 227 MW · 35 18 Sept 2020 · 177 MW · 54 19 Sept 2020 · 121 MW · 25 20 Sept 2020 · 4 MW · 1 21 Sept 2020 · 22 MW · 3 22 Sept 2020 · 5 MW · 5 23 Sept 2020 · 23 MW · 6 24 Sept 2020 · 10 MW · 2 26 Sept 2020 · 5 MW · 2
29 Aug 2 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 18 Sept 22 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
48km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 28 Sept.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,321 ha in 2017, 208 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,059 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (216 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
    21,624 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.9 %

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 area5.5 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.5 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (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)
29 Aug 37.3 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Aug 36.2 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Aug 34.2 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept 31.7 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Sept 30.4 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Sept 31.6 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Sept 35.4 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Sept 36.3 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Sept 36.9 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept 35.0 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Sept 31.7 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Sept 37.0 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 37.6 °C 15 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 37.9 °C 13 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Sept 37.6 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Sept 38.0 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Sept 36.9 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Sept 32.6 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 36.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 36.1 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Sept 35.4 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept 35.8 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Sept 29.0 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Sept 29.5 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Sept 28.5 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept 34.0 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Sept 36.9 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Sept 38.8 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Sept 36.6 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Sept after 36.9 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Sept after 34.7 °C 36 % 31 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2020
After · 3 Oct 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 · 822Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 August 2020 to 26 September 2020 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2020 to 23 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,552 hectares (215.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (21,624 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 September 2020 → 26 September 2020.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 August 2020 to 23 September 2020. 822 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.