Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Cáceres fire, 10 September 2021 Cáceres

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2021, 17:52 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2021 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,839 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 304th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 98 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2020Cáceres · 2024Poconé · 2021Cáceres · 2020

Burnt area
13,839ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
35days
10 Sept 2021 – 14 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Sept
2021
Heat detections
772
in a single hotspot: 134 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
211MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

15 Oct 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept14 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2021 · 83 MW · 9 11 Sept 2021 · 17 MW · 6 12 Sept 2021 · 812 MW · 31 13 Sept 2021 · 688 MW · 111 14 Sept 2021 · 412 MW · 71 15 Sept 2021 · 106 MW · 23 16 Sept 2021 · 68 MW · 16 18 Sept 2021 · 38 MW · 10 19 Sept 2021 · 277 MW · 31 20 Sept 2021 · 504 MW · 17 21 Sept 2021 · 368 MW · 27 22 Sept 2021 · 9 MW · 4 24 Sept 2021 · 697 MW · 34 25 Sept 2021 · 170 MW · 25 26 Sept 2021 · 13 MW · 5 28 Sept 2021 · 35 MW · 8 29 Sept 2021 · 15 MW · 6 30 Sept 2021 · 99 MW · 17 1 Oct 2021 · 111 MW · 14 2 Oct 2021 · 136 MW · 15 3 Oct 2021 · 32 MW · 3 4 Oct 2021 · 133 MW · 21 5 Oct 2021 · 414 MW · 92 6 Oct 2021 · 34 MW · 13 7 Oct 2021 · 68 MW · 5 8 Oct 2021 · 77 MW · 19 9 Oct 2021 · 473 MW · 51 10 Oct 2021 · 59 MW · 19 11 Oct 2021 · 126 MW · 30 13 Oct 2021 · 143 MW · 9 14 Oct 2021 · 27 MW · 12 15 Oct 2021 · 508 MW · 18
10 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 21 Sept 28 Sept 3 Oct 8 Oct 14 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
59km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 18 Oct.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,300 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (138 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
    13,911 ha reached on 10 Sept
    0.6 %

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)
10 Sept 32.0 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Sept 36.2 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Sept 40.2 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 39.5 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept 39.0 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
15 Sept 34.6 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm High 27
16 Sept 36.3 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
17 Sept 38.4 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Sept 40.1 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 40.5 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Sept 41.5 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Sept 40.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Sept 35.3 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Sept 37.5 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Sept 36.5 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Sept 38.9 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Sept 40.7 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40
27 Sept 35.2 °C 41 % 41 km/h 1.0 mm High 32
28 Sept 38.2 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Sept 39.6 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Sept 40.4 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Oct 41.0 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct 40.0 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Oct 39.8 °C 29 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 47
4 Oct 35.9 °C 38 % 33 km/h 3.9 mm Moderate 14
5 Oct 33.2 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Oct 37.9 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Oct 36.6 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
8 Oct 37.7 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.9 mm High 24
9 Oct 37.1 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Oct 37.8 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Oct 35.9 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
12 Oct 36.4 °C 46 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Oct 39.6 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Oct 36.2 °C 42 % 47 km/h 1.8 mm High 26
15 Oct after 38.8 °C 34 % 59 km/h 4.5 mm High 22
16 Oct after 31.4 °C 52 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
17 Oct after 33.6 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Oct after 32.8 °C 48 % 31 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2021
After · 21 Oct 2021

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 · 772Every 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 10 September 2021 and 14 October 2021: 35 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 13,839 hectares (138.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (13,911 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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.

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. 772 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.