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Corumbá fire, 2 April 2020 Corumbá

Out · last detection 21 Apr 2020, 17:12 UTC

The fire started on 2 April 2020 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,042 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 499th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 932 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Puerto Quijarro · 2024Corumbá · 2021Corumbá · 2020Corumbá · 2024

Burnt area
3,042ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
2 Apr 2020 – 23 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Apr
2020
Heat detections
285
in a single hotspot: 169 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
228MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Apr23 Apr
21 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

2 Apr 2020 · 42 MW · 6 3 Apr 2020 · 8 MW · 1 4 Apr 2020 · 108 MW · 14 5 Apr 2020 · 196 MW · 12 6 Apr 2020 · 853 MW · 16 9 Apr 2020 · 153 MW · 15 10 Apr 2020 · 270 MW · 38 11 Apr 2020 · 699 MW · 47 12 Apr 2020 · 323 MW · 56 13 Apr 2020 · 275 MW · 28 14 Apr 2020 · 152 MW · 17 15 Apr 2020 · 179 MW · 17 16 Apr 2020 · 127 MW · 13 17 Apr 2020 · 8 MW · 4 21 Apr 2020 · 26 MW · 1
2 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr 10 Apr 13 Apr 16 Apr

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
44km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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
    3,049 ha reached on 2 Apr
    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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
2 Apr 35.7 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm Low 9
3 Apr 28.0 °C 66 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
4 Apr 32.4 °C 44 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
5 Apr 34.2 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
6 Apr 34.8 °C 52 % 35 km/h 3.8 mm Very low 3
7 Apr 27.0 °C 73 % 30 km/h 16.1 mm Very low 0
8 Apr 29.2 °C 58 % 29 km/h 0.5 mm Very low 1
9 Apr 29.8 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
10 Apr 30.5 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
11 Apr 31.8 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
12 Apr 33.4 °C 37 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
13 Apr 33.1 °C 53 % 44 km/h 1.1 mm Low 9
14 Apr 26.7 °C 63 % 38 km/h 7.9 mm Very low 1
15 Apr 27.1 °C 47 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
16 Apr 28.2 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
17 Apr 29.1 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
18 Apr 31.5 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
19 Apr 33.9 °C 43 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
20 Apr 34.2 °C 46 % 19 km/h 0.6 mm Low 11
21 Apr 34.4 °C 42 % 19 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 13
22 Apr 34.9 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
23 Apr 34.3 °C 29 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
24 Apr after 33.9 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
25 Apr after 34.1 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Apr after 33.5 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 15
27 Apr after 34.5 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Apr after 34.6 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Apr after 34.5 °C 41 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
30 Apr after 34.5 °C 40 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
1 May after 35.1 °C 36 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Mar 2020
After · 30 Apr 2020

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 · 285Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 April 2020 to 23 April 2020 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 April 2020 to 17 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,042 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (3,049 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, class Moderate.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 17 April 2020 → 23 April 2020.
  2. Start date: 9 April 2020 → 2 April 2020.

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
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 April 2020 to 17 April 2020. 285 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 2020, 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.