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Corumbá fire, 22 October 2019 Corumbá

Out · last detection 7 Nov 2019, 17:25 UTC

The fire started on 22 October 2019 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,426 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 145th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 185 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2017Corumbá · 2017Corumbá · 2019Corumbá · 2020

Burnt area
9,426ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
22 Oct 2019 – 7 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Oct
2019
Heat detections
411
in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
543MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

7 Nov 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Oct7 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

22 Oct 2019 · 125 MW · 9 24 Oct 2019 · 509 MW · 25 25 Oct 2019 · 2,308 MW · 55 26 Oct 2019 · 468 MW · 44 27 Oct 2019 · 794 MW · 35 28 Oct 2019 · 897 MW · 49 29 Oct 2019 · 659 MW · 22 30 Oct 2019 · 875 MW · 66 31 Oct 2019 · 342 MW · 26 1 Nov 2019 · 164 MW · 13 2 Nov 2019 · 211 MW · 15 3 Nov 2019 · 393 MW · 16 4 Nov 2019 · 334 MW · 23 5 Nov 2019 · 53 MW · 11 7 Nov 2019 · 13 MW · 2
22 Oct 25 Oct 26 Oct 29 Oct 1 Nov 4 Nov

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
54km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 27.2 mm on 10 Nov.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,924 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (94 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
    9,492 ha reached on 22 Oct
    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)
22 Oct 31.4 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
23 Oct 35.4 °C 35 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
24 Oct 38.1 °C 29 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
25 Oct 39.2 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 Oct 39.0 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Oct 39.1 °C 30 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Oct 40.0 °C 29 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Oct 39.5 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Oct 40.4 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Oct 40.5 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
1 Nov 36.3 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Nov 38.6 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Nov 38.3 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
4 Nov 38.9 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Nov 39.1 °C 32 % 47 km/h 2.0 mm High 32
6 Nov 33.3 °C 49 % 32 km/h 4.2 mm Low 6
7 Nov 32.3 °C 62 % 29 km/h 10.4 mm Very low 1
8 Nov after 31.0 °C 59 % 26 km/h 2.5 mm Very low 1
9 Nov after 35.7 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
10 Nov after 28.5 °C 72 % 32 km/h 27.2 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Oct 2019
After · 14 Nov 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 · 411Every 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 October 2019 and 7 November 2019: 17 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 9,426 hectares (94.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (9,492 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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.

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 411 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.

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.