Cáceres fire, 10 August 2024 Cáceres
The fire started on 10 August 2024 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,842 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 623th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 415 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,842ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 10 Aug 2024 – 19 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 10 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 546
- in a single hotspot: 643 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.4GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 187 ha in 2016, 114 ha in 2018, 20 ha in 2019, 3,498 ha in 2020, 4,317 ha in 2021, 8 ha in 2022, 1 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,691 ha that had burned before.
- 3,982 ha San Matías fire, September 2021 19,310 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,358 ha Cáceres fire, July 2020 3,802 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 752 ha San Matías fire, January 2020 5,121 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 187 ha San Matías fire, September 2016 4,846 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 20 ha San Matías fire, November 2019 3,669 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
5,780 ha reached on 10 Aug0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Aug | 22.6 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 11 Aug | 28.6 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Aug | 28.7 °C | 21 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Aug | 29.5 °C | 22 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 14 Aug | 34.3 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 15 Aug | 37.9 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Aug | 38.8 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Aug | 39.4 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Aug | 38.3 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 19 Aug | 38.9 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 20 Aug after | 39.3 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Aug after | 39.0 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 22 Aug after | 38.4 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 47 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 24 Aug after | 22.7 °C | 51 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Aug after | 20.4 °C | 40 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Aug after | 24.6 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 27 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 25 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 28 Aug after | 36.1 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 29 Aug after | 39.1 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 30 Aug after | 38.3 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 31 Aug after | 36.8 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 22 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 368 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 178: 12 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 546Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 117,348 haCáceres7 September 2021 · 39 days · 13 km away
- 31,905 haSan Matías5 September 2020 · 39 days · 21 km away
- 26,203 haCáceres26 August 2024 · 8 days · 23 km away
- 32,053 haCáceres26 September 2020 · 11 days · 24 km away
- 385,637 haSan Matías2 August 2024 · 69 days · 27 km away
- 28,340 haCáceres18 August 2021 · 9 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cáceres fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2024 and 19 August 2024: 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 7,842 hectares (78.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cáceres (5,780 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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
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
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. 546 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.
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.