How long did the Copo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 September 2020 to 2 October 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2020 to 30 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,717 hectares (17.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Copo (1,720 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

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

AR · Argentina · 2020-09-12 → 2020-10-02

Copo fire, 12 September 2020 Copo

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2020, 17:36 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2020 in Copo, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,717 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 223th largest in Santiago del Estero since 2016 (of 320 with a page). Number 539 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Almirante Brown · 2022 Copo · 2019 Copo · 2020

Burnt area: 1,717ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 12 Sept 2020 – 2 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 12 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 179; in a single hotspot: 160 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 126MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept2 Oct

Play back 2 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 23 Sept 27 Sept 2 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

42°high

65km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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

Copo where it started

1,720 ha reached on 12 Sept

0.1 %

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)
12 Sept	27.6 °C	39 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
13 Sept	31.3 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Sept	24.3 °C	24 %	43 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 39
15 Sept	27.1 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Sept	30.6 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
17 Sept	32.3 °C	12 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
18 Sept	37.0 °C	12 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Sept	28.5 °C	13 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
20 Sept	25.7 °C	14 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
21 Sept	26.7 °C	12 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
22 Sept	31.0 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
23 Sept	34.8 °C	21 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
24 Sept	38.4 °C	25 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
25 Sept	41.4 °C	20 %	65 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
26 Sept	42.2 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 67
27 Sept	29.4 °C	18 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
28 Sept	29.4 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
29 Sept	35.4 °C	24 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
30 Sept	41.1 °C	21 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Oct	39.6 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
2 Oct	30.1 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
3 Oct after	20.8 °C	48 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Oct after	24.5 °C	35 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Oct after	24.5 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Oct after	30.0 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Oct after	33.4 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Oct after	35.7 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
9 Oct after	33.1 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
10 Oct after	35.0 °C	12 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Sept 2020

After · 9 Oct 2020

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 · 179Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Copo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 September 2020 to 2 October 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2020 to 30 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,717 hectares (17.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Copo (1,720 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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: 911 · 100 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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 911 · 100.

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 12 September 2020 to 30 September 2020. 179 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