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Canabrava do Norte fire, 7 September 2019 Canabrava do Norte, São Félix do Araguaia

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2019, 17:27 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2019 in Canabrava do Norte, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 45,005 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 56th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 15 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: São Félix do Araguaia · 2016São Félix do Araguaia · 2016São Félix do Araguaia · 2025São Félix do Araguaia · 2016

Burnt area
45,005ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
7 Sept 2019 – 20 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2019
Heat detections
2,111
in a single hotspot: 178 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
2.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept20 Sept
20 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2019 · 1,948 MW · 51 8 Sept 2019 · 12,359 MW · 477 9 Sept 2019 · 5,757 MW · 488 10 Sept 2019 · 1,791 MW · 351 11 Sept 2019 · 3,734 MW · 201 12 Sept 2019 · 2,047 MW · 214 13 Sept 2019 · 1,491 MW · 84 14 Sept 2019 · 578 MW · 101 15 Sept 2019 · 214 MW · 68 16 Sept 2019 · 298 MW · 34 17 Sept 2019 · 217 MW · 12 18 Sept 2019 · 209 MW · 19 19 Sept 2019 · 59 MW · 6 20 Sept 2019 · 14 MW · 5
7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 17 Sept 19 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

40°high
43km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 28 Sept.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,735 ha in 2016, 1,296 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,569 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 28% of the area of London (450 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. Canabrava do Norte 4,485 inhabitants where it started
    37,186 ha reached on 7 Sept
    11 %
  2. São Félix do Araguaia 13,621 inhabitants
    8,127 ha reached on 11 Sept
    0.5 %

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 area1.1 ha
Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 90 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)
7 Sept 36.2 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Sept 36.6 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept 37.2 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Sept 38.0 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept 38.5 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Sept 38.5 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Sept 39.6 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Sept 39.8 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept 39.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Sept 38.1 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Sept 39.2 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Sept 38.0 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Sept 37.4 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Sept 38.2 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept after 37.3 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept after 38.1 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Sept after 35.8 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Sept after 37.8 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Sept after 35.7 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Sept after 35.7 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 45
27 Sept after 36.5 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 38
28 Sept after 34.4 °C 38 % 29 km/h 3.4 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2019
After · 27 Sept 2019

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 · 2,111Every 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 Canabrava do Norte fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 September 2019 and 20 September 2019: 14 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 45,005 hectares (450.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Canabrava do Norte (37,186 ha, 11 %); São Félix do Araguaia (8,127 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 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
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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. 2,111 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.