How long did the Colniza fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 August 2016 to 13 September 2016 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2016 to 13 September 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,122 hectares (41.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Colniza (4,148 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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 · 2016-08-23 → 2016-09-13

Colniza fire, 23 August 2016 Colniza

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2016, 05:55 UTC

The fire started on 23 August 2016 in Colniza, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,122 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1369th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 383 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Colniza · 2019 Colniza · 2021 Colniza · 2026 Colniza · 2024

Burnt area: 4,122ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 23 Aug 2016 – 13 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 23 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 256; in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 107MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Aug13 Sept

Play back 13 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

23 Aug 26 Aug 31 Aug 4 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 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

36°high

36km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.7 mm on 18 Sept.

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 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

Colniza where it started

4,148 ha reached on 23 Aug

0.2 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.41 ha

Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.41 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
23 Aug	34.3 °C	34 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
24 Aug	36.0 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Aug	35.5 °C	36 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Aug	34.3 °C	42 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Aug	30.1 °C	58 %	25 km/h	3.7 mm	Very low 4
28 Aug	29.3 °C	67 %	33 km/h	12.7 mm	Very low 0
29 Aug	32.2 °C	46 %	25 km/h	3.2 mm	Very low 2
30 Aug	29.1 °C	69 %	24 km/h	29.0 mm	Very low 0
31 Aug	31.0 °C	63 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	Very low 1
1 Sept	29.1 °C	67 %	22 km/h	11.9 mm	Very low 0
2 Sept	28.5 °C	72 %	25 km/h	12.4 mm	Very low 0
3 Sept	29.6 °C	66 %	31 km/h	1.0 mm	Very low 0
4 Sept	29.2 °C	58 %	30 km/h	0.7 mm	Very low 1
5 Sept	30.5 °C	51 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 4
6 Sept	30.8 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
7 Sept	33.2 °C	45 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
8 Sept	34.6 °C	42 %	21 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 10
9 Sept	36.1 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 12
10 Sept	36.2 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
11 Sept	34.8 °C	45 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
12 Sept	36.1 °C	39 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
13 Sept	34.9 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
14 Sept after	35.8 °C	43 %	21 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 6
15 Sept after	28.5 °C	74 %	33 km/h	13.4 mm	Very low 0
16 Sept after	29.4 °C	71 %	23 km/h	5.0 mm	Very low 0
17 Sept after	29.5 °C	74 %	22 km/h	8.5 mm	Very low 0
18 Sept after	27.7 °C	78 %	24 km/h	18.7 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Aug 2016

After · 20 Sept 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 · 256Every 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 Colniza fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 August 2016 to 13 September 2016 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2016 to 13 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,122 hectares (41.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Colniza (4,148 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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: 29 August 2016 → 23 August 2016.

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 29 August 2016 to 13 September 2016. 256 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 2015, 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