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Corumbá fire, 16 July 2017 Corumbá, Barão de Melgaço

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2017, 16:48 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2017 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,868 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 27th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 24 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2020Corumbá · 2019Corumbá · 2020Barão de Melgaço · 2024

Burnt area
36,868ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
16 Jul 2017 – 15 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
16 Jul
2017
Heat detections
1,473
in a single hotspot: 158 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
440MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul15 Aug
15 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2017 · 23 MW · 4 17 Jul 2017 · 4 MW · 3 18 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1 19 Jul 2017 · 22 MW · 4 20 Jul 2017 · 18 MW · 4 21 Jul 2017 · 177 MW · 19 22 Jul 2017 · 171 MW · 24 23 Jul 2017 · 550 MW · 62 24 Jul 2017 · 731 MW · 49 25 Jul 2017 · 1,000 MW · 80 26 Jul 2017 · 248 MW · 23 27 Jul 2017 · 1,113 MW · 63 28 Jul 2017 · 328 MW · 75 29 Jul 2017 · 560 MW · 61 30 Jul 2017 · 278 MW · 13 31 Jul 2017 · 235 MW · 26 1 Aug 2017 · 244 MW · 36 2 Aug 2017 · 87 MW · 20 3 Aug 2017 · 418 MW · 73 4 Aug 2017 · 111 MW · 33 5 Aug 2017 · 515 MW · 41 6 Aug 2017 · 174 MW · 34 7 Aug 2017 · 524 MW · 93 8 Aug 2017 · 356 MW · 58 9 Aug 2017 · 1,514 MW · 135 10 Aug 2017 · 744 MW · 89 11 Aug 2017 · 2,666 MW · 196 12 Aug 2017 · 276 MW · 68 13 Aug 2017 · 247 MW · 57 14 Aug 2017 · 124 MW · 14 15 Aug 2017 · 177 MW · 15
16 Jul 21 Jul 26 Jul 31 Jul 5 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 15 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

38°high
50km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 17 Aug.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,242 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 23% of the area of London (369 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. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    36,687 ha reached on 16 Jul
    0.6 %
  2. Barão de Melgaço 15,246 inhabitants
    17 ha
    0.0 %

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 area0.31 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
16 Jul 33.3 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jul 23.6 °C 49 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Jul 18.0 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Jul 22.9 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Jul 27.3 °C 38 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
21 Jul 31.9 °C 36 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Jul 33.2 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Jul 34.4 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jul 34.8 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jul 33.5 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul 33.6 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Jul 32.1 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Jul 32.2 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jul 32.9 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Jul 33.7 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Jul 33.0 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 33.1 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Aug 34.5 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Aug 24.3 °C 49 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Aug 28.4 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
5 Aug 32.5 °C 36 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Aug 34.3 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Aug 36.9 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug 37.6 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Aug 37.5 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug 38.0 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Aug 38.1 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Aug 37.6 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Aug 29.6 °C 52 % 43 km/h 7.3 mm Low 6
14 Aug 30.3 °C 59 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
15 Aug 32.9 °C 58 % 21 km/h 2.7 mm Low 6
16 Aug after 34.5 °C 45 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
17 Aug after 28.9 °C 65 % 26 km/h 1.7 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2017
After · 22 Aug 2017

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 · 1,473Every 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 Corumbá fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 July 2017 to 15 August 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 July 2017 to 15 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 36,868 hectares (368.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (36,687 ha, 0.6 %); Barão de Melgaço (17 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 July 2017 to 15 August 2017. 1,473 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.