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Corumbá fire, 7 August 2019 Corumbá, Barão de Melgaço

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2019, 17:07 UTC

The fire started on 7 August 2019 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 33,753 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 31th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 21 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Burnt area
33,753ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
7 Aug 2019 – 19 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
7 Aug
2019
Heat detections
1,165
in a single hotspot: 156 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
19.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Aug 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Aug19 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

7891011121314151617181920

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
50km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 27 Aug.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,279 ha in 2016, 18,245 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    33,576 ha reached on 7 Aug
    0.5 %
  2. Barão de Melgaço 15,246 inhabitants
    28 ha
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
7 Aug 33.8 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug 33.9 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Aug 33.7 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug 29.9 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Aug 33.3 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Aug 34.8 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Aug 29.2 °C 47 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Aug 26.5 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Aug 33.2 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Aug 34.5 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Aug 35.6 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Aug 34.2 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Aug 32.5 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
20 Aug after 31.8 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Aug after 34.6 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Aug after 36.6 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Aug after 35.5 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Aug after 36.1 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Aug after 36.1 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Aug after 35.4 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Aug after 29.1 °C 52 % 30 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Jul 2019
After · 26 Aug 2019

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 · 1,165Every 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 7 August 2019 and 19 August 2019: 13 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 33,753 hectares (337.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (33,576 ha, 0.5 %); Barão de Melgaço (28 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 50 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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.

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.