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Corumbá fire, 22 August 2017 Corumbá, Barão de Melgaço

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2017, 16:48 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2017 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,668 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 57th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 66 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2020Itiquira · 2017Corumbá · 2017Corumbá · 2020

Burnt area
20,668ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
22 Aug 2017 – 15 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
22 Aug
2017
Heat detections
717
in a single hotspot: 133 MW
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
316MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug15 Sept
16 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2017 · 98 MW · 13 23 Aug 2017 · 194 MW · 10 24 Aug 2017 · 669 MW · 51 25 Aug 2017 · 1,113 MW · 77 26 Aug 2017 · 1,473 MW · 79 27 Aug 2017 · 1,014 MW · 73 28 Aug 2017 · 757 MW · 80 29 Aug 2017 · 293 MW · 47 30 Aug 2017 · 57 MW · 10 31 Aug 2017 · 3 MW · 1 1 Sept 2017 · 3 MW · 1 2 Sept 2017 · 115 MW · 7 3 Sept 2017 · 35 MW · 9 4 Sept 2017 · 37 MW · 9 5 Sept 2017 · 80 MW · 8 6 Sept 2017 · 183 MW · 30 7 Sept 2017 · 36 MW · 10 8 Sept 2017 · 25 MW · 4 9 Sept 2017 · 144 MW · 25 10 Sept 2017 · 1,254 MW · 74 11 Sept 2017 · 32 MW · 7 12 Sept 2017 · 58 MW · 8 13 Sept 2017 · 198 MW · 37 14 Sept 2017 · 203 MW · 11 15 Sept 2017 · 121 MW · 30 16 Sept 2017 · 32 MW · 6
22 Aug 26 Aug 30 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 15 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

40°high
42km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (207 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
    20,582 ha reached on 22 Aug
    0.3 %
  2. Barão de Melgaço 15,246 inhabitants
    5 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 area0.48 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.48 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)
22 Aug 31.8 °C 48 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
23 Aug 35.4 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
24 Aug 36.0 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Aug 36.1 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Aug 37.0 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Aug 37.6 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Aug 38.6 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Aug 39.5 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Aug 38.8 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Aug 36.7 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Sept 38.4 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Sept 38.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Sept 37.7 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Sept 37.2 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Sept 36.7 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Sept 35.4 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 37.4 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 38.6 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 39.2 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 38.9 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept 34.2 °C 44 % 32 km/h 3.2 mm Low 11
12 Sept 37.3 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Sept 38.8 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Sept 38.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept 39.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept after 30.3 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Sept after 31.0 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Sept after 37.3 °C 23 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Sept after 38.9 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Sept after 38.9 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Sept after 38.6 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Sept after 36.5 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Sept after 36.9 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept after 37.1 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Sept after 39.9 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2017
After · 22 Sept 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 · 717Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 August 2017 and 15 September 2017: 25 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,668 hectares (206.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (20,582 ha, 0.3 %); Barão de Melgaço (5 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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
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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 717 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.