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Corrente fire, 4 September 2021 Corrente, São Gonçalo do Gurguéia

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2021, 16:50 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2021 in Corrente, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,491 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 28th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 61 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corrente · 2017Corrente · 2026São Gonçalo do Gurguéia · 2023São Gonçalo do Gurguéia · 2020

Burnt area
19,491ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
4 Sept 2021 – 26 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
4 Sept
2021
Heat detections
864
in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
540MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept26 Sept
27 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2021 · 10 MW · 4 6 Sept 2021 · 56 MW · 2 7 Sept 2021 · 729 MW · 23 8 Sept 2021 · 527 MW · 32 9 Sept 2021 · 2,365 MW · 102 10 Sept 2021 · 206 MW · 34 11 Sept 2021 · 605 MW · 59 12 Sept 2021 · 770 MW · 65 13 Sept 2021 · 730 MW · 60 14 Sept 2021 · 490 MW · 46 15 Sept 2021 · 1,047 MW · 91 16 Sept 2021 · 1,163 MW · 87 17 Sept 2021 · 287 MW · 57 18 Sept 2021 · 332 MW · 29 19 Sept 2021 · 163 MW · 15 20 Sept 2021 · 548 MW · 52 21 Sept 2021 · 338 MW · 39 22 Sept 2021 · 1,685 MW · 25 23 Sept 2021 · 125 MW · 19 24 Sept 2021 · 34 MW · 2 25 Sept 2021 · 99 MW · 5 26 Sept 2021 · 97 MW · 15 27 Sept 2021 · 9 MW · 1
4 Sept 9 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 Sept 25 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,423 ha in 2016, 1,320 ha in 2017, 1,987 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (195 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. Corrente 27,278 inhabitants where it started
    16,964 ha reached on 4 Sept
    5.5 %
  2. São Gonçalo do Gurguéia 2,947 inhabitants
    2,646 ha reached on 6 Sept
    1.9 %

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 area0.60 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.60 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (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)
4 Sept 32.9 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 32.2 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 34.0 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept 34.3 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Sept 34.1 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Sept 35.0 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Sept 35.7 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 35.5 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Sept 35.5 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Sept 34.7 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Sept 35.8 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept 36.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Sept 35.3 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 33.6 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Sept 34.3 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Sept 35.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Sept 36.6 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Sept 36.3 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Sept 37.5 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Sept 33.8 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Sept 32.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Sept 32.1 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Sept 32.9 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Sept after 34.1 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
28 Sept after 33.8 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Sept after 33.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Sept after 34.2 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Oct after 34.4 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Oct after 33.9 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Oct after 35.0 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Oct after 35.6 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Oct after 35.9 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct after 36.0 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2021
After · 3 Oct 2021

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 · 864Every 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 Corrente fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 September 2021 to 26 September 2021 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2021 to 23 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,491 hectares (194.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corrente (16,964 ha, 5.5 %); São Gonçalo do Gurguéia (2,646 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 September 2021 → 26 September 2021.
  2. Start date: 7 September 2021 → 4 September 2021.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 September 2021 to 23 September 2021. 864 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.