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Corumbá fire, 14 August 2019 Corumbá

Out · last detection 25 Aug 2019, 17:13 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2019 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,788 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 81th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 89 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Burnt area
14,788ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
14 Aug 2019 – 25 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Aug
2019
Heat detections
660
in a single hotspot: 445 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Energy released
16.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Aug 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug25 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

141516171819202122232425

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
56km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.9 mm on 27 Aug.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,800 ha in 2016, 25 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    14,958 ha reached on 12 Aug
    0.2 %

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)
12 Aug 35.4 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Aug 26.6 °C 38 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Aug 22.2 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Aug 30.4 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Aug 33.2 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Aug 36.4 °C 26 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Aug 35.5 °C 34 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Aug 25.8 °C 49 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Aug 28.2 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Aug 30.5 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Aug 34.3 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Aug 30.5 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Aug 33.8 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Aug 34.1 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Aug after 32.6 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.6 mm High 32
27 Aug after 30.6 °C 55 % 38 km/h 11.9 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Aug 2019
After · 1 Sept 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 · 660Every 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 14 August 2019 and 25 August 2019: 12 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 14,788 hectares (147.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (14,958 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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.

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.

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.