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Colniza fire, 10 August 2020 Colniza

Out · last detection 26 Aug 2020, 17:34 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2020 in Colniza, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,218 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1328th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 614 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Colniza · 2019Colniza · 2024Colniza · 2024Novo Aripuanã · 2017

Burnt area
4,218ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
10 Aug 2020 – 26 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Aug
2020
Heat detections
354
in a single hotspot: 316 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
472MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug26 Aug
26 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 2020 · 596 MW · 10 11 Aug 2020 · 1,740 MW · 70 12 Aug 2020 · 224 MW · 54 13 Aug 2020 · 15 MW · 14 14 Aug 2020 · 12 MW · 5 15 Aug 2020 · 3,700 MW · 34 16 Aug 2020 · 507 MW · 49 17 Aug 2020 · 295 MW · 42 18 Aug 2020 · 275 MW · 32 19 Aug 2020 · 81 MW · 17 20 Aug 2020 · 2 MW · 2 22 Aug 2020 · 17 MW · 3 23 Aug 2020 · 5 MW · 1 24 Aug 2020 · 18 MW · 6 25 Aug 2020 · 21 MW · 8 26 Aug 2020 · 39 MW · 7
10 Aug 13 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug 19 Aug 23 Aug 26 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
43km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 28 Aug.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,002 ha in 2016, 3,029 ha in 2017, 2,486 ha in 2018, 2,073 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,675 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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. Colniza where it started
    4,241 ha reached on 10 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 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)
3 Aug 35.0 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Aug 35.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Aug 35.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug 34.9 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Aug 34.3 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Aug 35.4 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Aug 35.3 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Aug 35.8 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Aug 35.4 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Aug 37.3 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Aug 36.7 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Aug 36.2 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Aug 36.8 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Aug 36.4 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Aug 39.5 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Aug 37.9 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Aug 37.2 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Aug 35.4 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
21 Aug 26.1 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Aug 28.8 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Aug 33.6 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Aug 34.2 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Aug 34.2 °C 37 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Aug 34.9 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Aug after 36.1 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.6 mm High 29
28 Aug after 34.9 °C 46 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2020
After · 2 Sept 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 · 354Every 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 Colniza fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 August 2020 to 26 August 2020 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 August 2020 to 20 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,218 hectares (42.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Colniza (4,241 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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: 20 August 2020 → 26 August 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 10 August 2020 to 20 August 2020. 354 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.