How long did the Catingueira fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2022 to 24 October 2022 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2022 to 17 October 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,382 hectares (33.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Catingueira (1,715 ha, 3.2 %); Santa Teresinha (1,689 ha, 4.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2022-09-25 → 2022-10-24

Catingueira fire, September 2022 Catingueira, Santa Teresinha

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2022, 16:01 UTC

The fire started on 25 September 2022 in Catingueira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,382 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 554 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Olho d'Água · 2019 Olho d'Água · 2021

Burnt area: 3,382ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 30days; 25 Sept 2022 – 24 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 25 Sept; 2022
Heat detections: 148; in a single hotspot: 228 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 91MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Sept24 Oct

Play back 24 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

25 Sept 30 Sept 4 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 23 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

35°high

51km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (34 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

Catingueira 4,491 inhabitants where it started

1,715 ha reached on 25 Sept

3.2 %
Santa Teresinha 4,402 inhabitants

1,689 ha reached on 28 Sept

4.7 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
21 Sept	33.3 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
22 Sept	32.3 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
23 Sept	34.8 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Sept	33.7 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Sept	32.6 °C	29 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
26 Sept	32.7 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Sept	32.9 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Sept	33.1 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
29 Sept	33.5 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Sept	33.3 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
1 Oct	33.3 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
2 Oct	33.5 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Oct	33.4 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
4 Oct	34.0 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Oct	33.9 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 49
6 Oct	33.7 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 Oct	34.1 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 46
8 Oct	35.4 °C	26 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 49
9 Oct	33.6 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
10 Oct	33.2 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.5 mm	Extreme 50
11 Oct	34.1 °C	25 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
12 Oct	32.5 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
13 Oct	34.5 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
14 Oct	33.6 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
15 Oct	33.8 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
16 Oct	33.7 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
17 Oct	34.2 °C	24 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
18 Oct	33.7 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Oct	33.0 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
20 Oct	33.8 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
21 Oct	33.3 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
22 Oct	34.7 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
23 Oct	34.2 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
24 Oct	34.1 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
25 Oct after	32.5 °C	39 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Oct after	31.0 °C	41 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	High 34
27 Oct after	34.3 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Oct after	34.3 °C	27 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
29 Oct after	33.8 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Oct after	33.9 °C	28 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
31 Oct after	34.7 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Nov after	34.0 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Nov after	33.4 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
3 Nov after	33.4 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Sept 2022

After · 31 Oct 2022

Before After

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 9 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1016 µg/m³

Optical depth0.22

23242526272829301234567891011121314151617181920

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 · 148Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Catingueira fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2022 to 24 October 2022 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2022 to 17 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,382 hectares (33.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Catingueira (1,715 ha, 3.2 %); Santa Teresinha (1,689 ha, 4.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 September 2022 to 17 October 2022. 148 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.

Where it burned