How long did the Chota fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 November 2016 and 25 November 2016: 9 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 12,032 hectares (120.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chota (12,111 ha, 3.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 21.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Peru (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

PE · Peru · 2016-11-17 → 2016-11-25

Chota fire, 17 November 2016 Chota

Out · last detection 25 Nov 2016, 19:04 UTC

The fire started on 17 November 2016 in Chota, Peru, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,032 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Cajamarca since 2016 (of 22 with a page). The largest in Peru in 2016, of 58.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chota · 2016 Chota · 2024 Ferreñafe · 2016 Ferreñafe · 2016

Burnt area: 12,032ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 17 Nov 2016 – 25 Nov 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; provinces
Started on: 17 Nov; 2016
Heat detections: 507; in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 842MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Nov25 Nov

Play back 25 Nov 2016

How it evolved, day by day

17 Nov 20 Nov 22 Nov 24 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

21°high

53km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.6 mm on 26 Nov.

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 7.6% of the area of London (120 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

Chota 811 inhabitants where it started

12,111 ha reached on 16 Nov

3.2 %

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)
16 Nov	19.6 °C	16 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
17 Nov	20.4 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
18 Nov	20.6 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
19 Nov	21.4 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
20 Nov	18.4 °C	9 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
21 Nov	19.8 °C	7 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
22 Nov	21.1 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
23 Nov	20.1 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
24 Nov	19.8 °C	38 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 14
25 Nov	19.3 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
26 Nov after	18.2 °C	41 %	36 km/h	5.6 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Nov 2016

After · 2 Dec 2016

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.

Detections table · 507Every 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 Peru ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chota fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 November 2016 and 25 November 2016: 9 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 12,032 hectares (120.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chota (12,111 ha, 3.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 21.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Peru (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: 116 · 105

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 116 · 105.

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. 507 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.

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