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Cocalinho fire, 25 September 2020 Cocalinho

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2020, 16:43 UTC

The fire started on 25 September 2020 in Cocalinho, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,785 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 280th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 114 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cocalinho · 2017Cocalinho · 2016Cocalinho · 2024Cocalinho · 2023

Burnt area
14,785ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
25 Sept 2020 – 5 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Sept
2020
Heat detections
584
in a single hotspot: 356 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Sept5 Oct
5 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

25 Sept 2020 · 915 MW · 72 26 Sept 2020 · 656 MW · 97 27 Sept 2020 · 752 MW · 77 28 Sept 2020 · 1,223 MW · 78 29 Sept 2020 · 6,233 MW · 164 30 Sept 2020 · 1,218 MW · 63 1 Oct 2020 · 55 MW · 7 2 Oct 2020 · 18 MW · 3 3 Oct 2020 · 165 MW · 12 4 Oct 2020 · 293 MW · 9 5 Oct 2020 · 34 MW · 2
25 Sept 27 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 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

41°high
36km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.4 mm on 11 Oct.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,724 ha in 2016, 4,882 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.3% of the area of London (148 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. Cocalinho 6,220 inhabitants where it started
    14,816 ha reached on 25 Sept
    0.9 %

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)
25 Sept 37.2 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Sept 35.5 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Sept 37.0 °C 31 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Sept 39.3 °C 23 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Sept 40.8 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Sept 38.9 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Oct 38.2 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Oct 38.9 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Oct 39.9 °C 22 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Oct 40.2 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Oct 39.9 °C 24 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Oct after 38.7 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Oct after 39.7 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Oct after 39.7 °C 25 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Oct after 39.5 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Oct after 36.4 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Oct after 27.6 °C 67 % 27 km/h 4.4 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Sept 2020
After · 12 Oct 2020

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 · 584Every 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 Cocalinho fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2020 to 5 October 2020 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2020 to 1 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,785 hectares (147.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cocalinho (14,816 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 October 2020 → 5 October 2020.

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 2020 to 1 October 2020. 584 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.