Skip to content
worldfires
BR · Brazil · →

Cáceres fire, 2 August 2024 Cáceres

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2024, 04:42 UTC

The fire started on 2 August 2024 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,864 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 903th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 573 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Burnt area
5,864ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
2 Aug 2024 – 6 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Aug
2024
Heat detections
196
in a single hotspot: 124 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
3.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Aug 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Aug6 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

3456

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
51km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 217 ha in 2019, 5,629 ha in 2020, 5,985 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,708 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants where it started
    5,914 ha reached on 3 Aug
    0.2 %

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)
2 Aug 38.0 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
3 Aug 37.9 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Aug 38.2 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Aug 37.6 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
6 Aug 36.3 °C 13 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
7 Aug after 38.0 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Aug after 26.8 °C 54 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Aug after 16.2 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Aug after 23.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Aug after 29.2 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug after 29.7 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Aug after 30.6 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Aug after 35.4 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Aug after 38.9 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Aug after 39.6 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jul 2024
After · 13 Aug 2024

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 6 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 178 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 71: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak178 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10254 µg/m³
Optical depth3.00
31123456789
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 196Every 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 2 August 2024 and 6 August 2024: 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 5,864 hectares (58.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (5,914 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.

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.