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Corumbá fire, 7 September 2019 Corumbá

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2019, 17:06 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2019 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 35,314 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 29th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 19 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Burnt area
35,314ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
7 Sept 2019 – 20 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2019
Heat detections
1,433
in a single hotspot: 191 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Energy released
24.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Sept 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept20 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

789101112131415161718192021

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
58km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.5 mm on 25 Sept.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11,733 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    35,588 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.6 %

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)
5 Sept 31.8 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Sept 38.2 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Sept 38.8 °C 21 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
8 Sept 38.7 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept 38.6 °C 22 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Sept 38.6 °C 19 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Sept 37.9 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept 29.2 °C 46 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Sept 29.7 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Sept 35.7 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Sept 39.2 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Sept 40.5 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 31.3 °C 40 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Sept 33.6 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 37.7 °C 34 % 56 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 49
20 Sept 37.3 °C 38 % 52 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 42
21 Sept after 32.1 °C 40 % 35 km/h 1.7 mm High 22
22 Sept after 35.4 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Sept after 35.8 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Sept after 38.1 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Sept after 30.1 °C 44 % 35 km/h 23.5 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2019
After · 27 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 · 1,433Every 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 September 2019 and 20 September 2019: 14 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 35,314 hectares (353.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (35,588 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.