How long did the Cavalcante fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2022 to 17 October 2022 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 October 2022 to 17 October 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,360 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cavalcante (3,384 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2022-10-06 → 2022-10-17

Cavalcante fire, October 2022 Cavalcante

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2022, 16:31 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2022 in Cavalcante, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,360 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 473th largest in Goiás since 2016 (of 548 with a page). Number 558 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Alto Paraíso de Goiás · 2020 Cavalcante · 2017 Cavalcante · 2025 Cavalcante · 2017

Burnt area: 3,360ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 6 Oct 2022 – 17 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 6 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 91; in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 153MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct17 Oct

Play back 17 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct 15 Oct 16 Oct 17 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

36°high

45km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 22 Oct.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,082 ha in 2017, 3,053 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,143 ha that had burned before.

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

Cavalcante 9,583 inhabitants where it started

3,384 ha reached on 6 Oct

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 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)
6 Oct	35.1 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
7 Oct	31.7 °C	49 %	32 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 8
8 Oct	32.9 °C	37 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
9 Oct	33.0 °C	38 %	37 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 17
10 Oct	35.2 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Oct	34.9 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Oct	35.0 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Oct	34.2 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Oct	35.5 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Oct	34.8 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Oct	34.2 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
17 Oct	35.3 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Oct after	34.8 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Oct after	35.2 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Oct after	35.6 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Oct after	32.1 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Oct after	32.0 °C	40 %	24 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Sept 2022

After · 24 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 17 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1043 µg/m³

Optical depth0.45

WHO 15

11121314151617181920

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 · 91Every 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 Cavalcante fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2022 to 17 October 2022 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 October 2022 to 17 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,360 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cavalcante (3,384 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 13 October 2022 → 6 October 2022.

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 do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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 13 October 2022 to 17 October 2022. 91 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